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r-HNOLOGY IN 

Folklore 



GOMME. F.S.A. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 




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U.XITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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flDofcern Science Series 

EDITED BY SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., M.P. 



ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE 



MODERN SCIENCE SERIES, v, 

Edited by Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart, M. P. 



I. The Cause of an Ice Age. 

By Sir Robert Ball, LL. D., F. R. S., 
Royal Astronomer of Ireland. 

II. The Horse: 

A Study in Natural History. 
By William Henry Flower, C. B., 
Director of the British Natural 
History Museum. 

III. The Oak: 

A Popular Introduction to Forest 
Botany. 
By H. Marshall Ward, F. R. S. 

IV. Ethnology in Folklore. 

By George Lawrence Gomme, F. R. S., 
President of the Folklore Society, 
etc. 
(Others in preparation.) 



New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1. 3, & 5 Bond St. 



ETHNOLOGY IN 
FOLKLORE 



BY 



GEORGE LAURENCE GOMME, F. S. A. 

PRESIDENT OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY, ETC. 




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NEW YOKE 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1892 






Copyright, 1892, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



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PKEFACE, 



I have sought in this book to ascertain and set 
forth the principles upon which folklore may be classi- 
fied, in order to arrive at some of the results which 
should follow from its study. That it contains ethno- 
logical elements might be expected by all who have 
paid any attention to recent research, but no attempt 
has hitherto been made to set these elements down cate- 
gorically and to examine the conclusions which are to 
be drawn from them. 

It is due to the large and increasing band of folklore 
devotees that the uses of folklore should be brought for- 
ward. The scoffer at these studies is apt to have it all 
his own way so long as the bulk of the books published 
on folklore contain nothing but collected examples of 
tales, customs, and superstitions, arranged for no pur- 
pose but that of putting the facts pleasantly before 
readers. But, more than this, recent research tends 
to show the increasing importance of bringing into 
proper order, within reasonable time, all the evidence 
that is available from different sources upon any given 
subject of inquiry. Looked at in this light, ethnology 



v i PREFACE. 

has great claims upon the student. The science of 
culture has almost refused to deal with it, and has been 
content with noting only a few landmarks which occur 
here and there along the lines of development traceable 
in the elements of human culture. But the science of 
history has of late been busy with many problems of 
ethnological importance, and has for this purpose 
turned sometimes to craniology, sometimes to archae- 
ology, sometimes to philology, but rarely to folklore. 
If folklore, then, does contain ethnological facts, it 
is time that they should be disclosed, and that the 
method of discovering them should be placed before 
scholars. 

Of course, my attempt in this direction must not be 
looked upon in any sense as an exhaustive treatment of 
the subject, and I am not vain enough to expect that 
all my conclusions will be accepted. I believe that the 
time has come when every item of folklore should be 
docketed and put into its proper place, and I hope I 
have done something toward this end in the following 
pages. When complete classification is attempted some 
of the items of folklore will be found useless enough. 
But most of them will help us to understand more of 
the development of thought than any other subject ; 
and many of them will, if my reading of the evidence 
is correct, take us back, not only to stages in the history 
of human thought, but to the people who have yielded 
up the struggle of their minds to the modern student of 
man and his strivings. 



PREFACE. Vii 

At the risk of crowding the pages with footnotes, I 
have been careful to give references to all my authorities 
for items of folklore, because so much depends upon the 
value of the authority used in these studies. I believe 
they are all quoted accurately, but shall always be glad 
to know of any corrections or additions. 

Professor Khys has kindly read through my proofs, 
and I am very grateful for the considerable service he 
has thereby rendered me. 

Barnes Common, S. W., March, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— Survival and Development 1 

II. — Ethnic Elements in Custom and Ritual . . 21 

III. — The Mythic Influences of a Conquered Race . 41 

IV.— The Localization of Primitive Belief . 67 

V.— The Ethnic Genealogy of Folklore . . .110 

VI. — The Continuation of Races . . . . .175 

Index 197 



ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 



CHAPTEK I. 

SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 

There has grown up of late years a subject of in- 
quiry — first antiquarian merely, and now scientific — into 
the peasant and local elements in modern culture, and 
this subject has not inaptly been termed " folklore." Al- 
most always at the commencement of a new study much 
is done by eager votaries which has to be undone as soon 
as settled work is undertaken, and it happens, I think, 
that because the elements of folklore are so humble and 
unpretentious, because they have to be sought for in the 
peasant's cottage or fields, in the children's nursery, or 
from the lips of old gaffers and gammers, that unusual 
difficulties have beset the student of folklore. Not only 
has he to undo any futile work that stands in the way 
of his special inquiry, but he has to attempt the re- 
building of his edifice in face of contrasts frequently 
drawn between the elements which make up his subject 
and those supposed more dignified elements with which 
the historian, the archaeologist, and the philologist have 
to deal. 



2 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

The essential characteristic of folklore is that it 
consists of beliefs, customs, and traditions which are far 
behind civilization in their intrinsic value to man, 
though they exist under the cover of a civilized 
nationality. This estimate of the position of folklore 
with reference to civilization suggests that its con- 
stituent elements are survivals of a condition of human 
thought more backward, and therefore more ancient, 
than that in which they are discovered. 

Except to the students of anthropology, the fact of 
the existence of survivals of older culture in our midst 
is not readily grasped or understood. Historians have 
been so engrossed with the political and commercial 
progress of nations that it is not easy to determine 
what room they would make in the world for the non- 
progressive portion of the population. And yet the 
history of every country must begin with the races who 
have occupied it. Almost everywhere in Europe there 
are traces, in some form or other, of a powerful race of 
people, unknown in modern history, who have left 
material remains of their culture to later ages. The 
Celts have written their history on the map of Europe 
in a scarcely less marked manner than the Teutons, 
and we still talk of Celtic countries and Teutonic 
countries. On the other hand, Greek and Roman 
civilizations have in some countries and some districts 
an almost unbroken record, in spite of much modifi- 
cation and development. With such an amalgam in 
the background, historians have scarcely ever failed to 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 3 

draw the picture of European civilization in deep col- 
ors, tinted according to their bias in favor of a Celtic, or 
Teutonic, or classical origin. But the picture of un- 
civilization within the same area has not been drawn. 
The story always is of the advanced part of nations,* 
though even here it occurs to me that very frequently 
the terminology is still more in advance of the facts, so 
that while every one has heard a great deal of the con- 
ditions of civilization, very few people have any adequate 
idea of the un advanced lines of European life. 

It will be seen that I accentuate the contrast between 
civilization and uncivilization within the same area, and 
the purpose of this accentuation will be seen when the 
significant difference in origin is pointed out. 

Dr. Tylor states that the elevation of some branches 
of a race over the rest more often happens as the result 
of foreign than of native action. " Civilization is a 
plant much oftener propagated than developed," he 
says.f How time this remark is will be recognized by 
any one familiar with the main outlines of the history of 
civilization, ancient or modern. An axiom formulated 
by Sir Arthur Mitchell that " no man in isolation 
can become civilized," may be extended to societies. 
Whether in the case of Eoman, Greek, Assyrian, Egyp- 
tian, or even Chinese civilization, a point has always 

* Some confirmation of this from classical history was pointed 
out by Dr. Beddoe in his address to the Anthrop. Inst, (see Journal, 
xx, 355). 

f Primitive Culture, i, 48. 



4 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

been reached at which scholars have had to turn their 
attention from the land where these civilizations were 
consummated to some other land or people, whose in- 
fluence in building them up is detected in considerable 
force. And so it is in the Western world. There are 
few scholars now who advocate the theory of an ad- 
vanced Celtic or Teutonic civilization. Eoman law, 
Greek philosophy and art, and Christian religion and 
ethics have combined in producing a civilization which is 
essentially foreign to the soil whereon it now flourishes. 
But with uncivilization the case is very different. 
Arrested by forces which we can not but identify with 
the civilizations which have at various times swept over 
it, it seems imbedded in the soil where it was first trans- 
planted, and has no power or chance of fresh propaga- 
tion. There is absolutely no evidence, in spite of alle- 
gations to the contrary, of the introduction of uncivil- 
ized culture into countries already in possession of a 
higher culture. And yet it is found everywhere and is 
kept alive by the sanction of tradition — the traditional 
observance of what has always been observed, simply be- 
cause it has always been observed. Thus, after the law 
of the land has been complied with and the marriage 
knot has been effectually tied, traditional custom im- 
poses certain rites which may without exaggeration 
be styled irrational, rude, and barbarous. After the 
Church has conducted to its last resting-place the corpse 
of the departed, traditional belief necessitates the per- 
formance of some magic rite which may with propriety 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 5 

be considered not only rude, but savage. Underneath 
the law and the Church, therefore, the emblems of the 
foreign civilization, lie the traditional custom and be- 
lief, the attributes of the native uncivilization. And 
the native answer to any inquiry as to why these irra- 
tional elements exist is invariably the same — " They are 
obliged to do it for antiquity or custom's sake " ; * they 
do it because they believe in it, " as things that had been 
and were real, and not as creations of the fancy or old- 
wives' tales and babble." Even after real belief has 
passed away the habit continues ; there is " a sort of use 
and wont in it which, though in a certain sense honored 
in its observance, it is felt, in some sort of indirect, un- 
meditated, unvolitional sort of way, would not be dis- 
honored in the breach." f 

The significant answer of the peasant, when ques- 
tioned as to the cause of his observing rude and irra- 
tional customs, of entertaining strange and uncouth be- 
liefs, marks a very important characteristic of what has 
been so conveniently termed folklore. All that the 
peasantry practice, believe, and relate on the strength 
of immemorial custom sanctioned by unbroken succes- 

* Buchan's St. Kilda, p. 35. Mr. Atkinson gives much the 
same testimony of Yorkshire. Inquiring as to a usage practiced 
on a farm, the answer was : " Ay, there's many as dis it yet. My 
au'd father did it. But it's sae many years syne it must be about 
wore out by now, and I shall have to dee it again." — Forty Years 
in a Moorland Parish, p. 62. Miss Gordon Cumming's example 
of the force of custom in her book on the Hebrides is very amus- 
ing (p. 209). 

f Atkinson, op. ciL, pp. 63, 72. 



G ETIIXOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

sion from one generation to another, has a value of 
peculiar significance so soon as it is perceived that the 
genealogy of each custom, belief, or legend in nearly all 
cases goes back for its commencing point to some fact 
in the history of the people which has escaped the no- 
tice of the historian. Ko act of legislation, no known 
factor in the records of history, can be pointed to as the 
origin of the practices, beliefs, and traditions of the 
peasantry, which exist in such great abundance. They 
are dateless and parentless when reckoned by the facts 
of civilization. They are treasured and reverenced, kept 
secret from Church, law, and legislation, handed down 
by tradition, when reckoned by the facts of peasant life. 
That these dateless elements in the national culture are 
also very frequently rude, irrational, and senseless only 
adds to the significance of their existence and to the 
necessity of some adequate explanation of that existence 
being supplied. 

No one would pretend that modern civilization con- 
sciously admits within its bounds practices and beliefs 
like those enshrined in folklore, and few will argue that 
modern civilization is an evolution in direct line from 
such rude originals. The theory that best meets the 
case is that they are to be identified with the rude cult- 
ure of ancient Europe, which has been swept over by 
waves of higher culture from foreign sources, that 
nearly everywhere the rude culture has succumbed to 
the force of these waves, but has nevertheless here and 
there stood firm. 



SURVIVAL AXD DEVELOPMENT. 7 

Now, these being the conditions under which the 
survivals of ancient customs and beliefs exist, we have 
to note that they can not by any possibility develop. 
Having been arrested in their progress by some outside 
force, their development ceases. They continue, gener- 
ation after generation, either in a state of absolute crys- 
tallization, or they decay and split up into fragments ; 
they become degraded into mere symbolism or whittled 
down into mere superstition ; they drop back from a 
position of general use or observance by a whole com- 
munity into the personal observance of some few indi- 
viduals, or of a class ; they cease to affect the general 
conduct of the people, and become isolated and secret. 
Thus in folklore there is no development from one stage 
of culture to a higher one. 

These considerations serve to show how distinctly 
folklore is marked off from the political and social sur- 
roundings in which it is imbedded, and all questions as 
to its origin must therefore be a specific inquiry dealing 
with all the facts. The answer of the peasant already 
given shows the road which must be taken for such a 
purpose. We must travel back from generation to gen- 
eration of peasant life until a stage is reached where 
isolated beliefs and customs of the peasantry of to-day 
are found to occupy a foremost place in tribal or na- 
tional custom. To do this, the aid of comparative cus- 
tom and belief must be invoked. As Mr. Lang has so 
well expressed it : " When an apparently irrational and 
anomalous custom is found in any country, the method 



8 ETIINOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

is to look for a country where a similar practice is no 
longer irrational or anomalous, but in harmony with 
the manners and ideas of the people among whom it 
prevails." * Here, then, will be found the true meaning 
of customs and beliefs which exist uselessly in the midst 
of civilization. Their relationship to other customs and 
beliefs at a similar level of culture will also be ascer- 
tained. "When we subtract any particular custom of an 
uncivilized people from the general body of its asso- 
ciated customs, in order to compare it with a similar 
custom existing in isolated form in civilization, w r e are 
careful to note what other customs exist side by side 
with it in corelationship. These are its natural adhe- 
sions, so to speak, and by following them out we may 
also discover natural adhesions in folklore. But this is 
not all. The work of comparison having been accom- 
plished with reference to the group of customs and be- 
liefs in natural adhesion to each other, there will be 
found in folklore a large residuum of manifest incon- 
sistencies. I am inclined to lay considerable stress upon 
these inconsistencies in folklore. They have been noted 
frequently enough, but have not been adequately ex- 
plained. They have been set down to the curious twist- 
ings of the human mind when indulging in mythic 
thought. But I shall have another explanation to give, 
which will rest upon the facts of ethnology. 

Is it true, then, that the process of comparison.be- 

* Custom and Myth, p. 21. 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 9 

tween the elements of folklore and the customs and 
beliefs of uncivilized or savage people can be carried 
out to any considerable extent, or is it limited to a few 
isolated and exceptional examples ? It is obvious that 
this question is a vital one. It will be partly answered 
in the following pages ; but in the mean time it may be 
pointed out that although anthropologists have very sel- 
dom penetrated far into the realms of folklore, they 
have frequently noted that the beliefs and customs of 
savages find a close parallel among peasant beliefs and 
practices in Europe. More than once in the pages of 
Dr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. McLennan, and 
others, it is to be observed that the author turns aside 
from the consideration of the savage phenomena he is 
dealing with to draw attention to the close resemblance 
which they bear to some fragments of folklore — "the 
series ends as usual in the folklore of the civilized 
world " are Dr. Tylor's expressive words.* 

I do not want to lay too much stress upon words 
which may, perhaps, be considered by some to have 
been only a happy literary expression for interpreting 
an isolated group of facts immediately under the notice 
of the author. But that they are not to be so consid- 
ered, and that they convey a real condition of things in 
the science of culture, may be tested by an examination 
of Dr. Tylor's work, and I set them forth in order to fix 
upon them as one of the most important axioms in f olk- 

* Primitive Culture, i, 407. 



10 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

lore research. This axiom must, indeed, be constantly 
borne in mind as we wend our way through the various 
items of folklore in the following pages, and it will help 
to illustrate how much need there is to establish once 
and for all what place the several groups of folklore oc- 
cupy in the culture series. 

This way of expressing the relationship between sav- 
age culture and folklore suggests many important con- 
siderations when applied to a particular area. If peasant 
culture and savage culture are now at many points in 
close contact, how far may we go back to find the begin- 
ning of that contact ? Must we not dig down beneath 
each stratum of overlying higher culture and remove all 
the superincumbent mass before we can arrive at the 
original layer ? There seems to be no other course open. 
The forces that keep certain beliefs and ideas of man in 
civilized countries within the recognizable limits of sav- 
age culture, and continue them in this state generation 
after generation, can not be derived fiom the nature of 
individual men or women, or the results would be less 
systematic and evenly distributed, and would be liable 
to disappear and reappear according to circumstances. 
They must, therefore, act collectively, and must form 
an essential part of the beliefs and ideas which they 
govern. 

I do not know whether my use of the terms of geol- 
ogy in the attempt to state the position of folklore in 
relationship to the higher cultures is. unduly suggestive, 
but it undoubtedly puts before the inquirer into the 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. H 

origins of folklore the suggestion that the unnamed 
forces which are so obviously present must to a very 
great extent be identical with race. It can not be that 
the fragments of rude and irrational practices in civil- 
ized countries arise from the poor and peasant class hav- 
ing been in the habit of constantly borrowing the prac- 
tices and ideas of savages, because, among other reasons 
against such a theory, this borrowed culture must to a 
corresponding degree have displaced the practices and 
ideas of civilization. All the evidence goes to prove 
that the peasantry have inherited rude and irrational 
practices and ideas from savage predecessors — practices 
and ideas which have never been displaced by civiliza- 
tion. To deal adequately with these survivals is the ac- 
cepted province of the science of folklore, and it must 
therefore account for their existence, must point out the 
causes for their arrested development and the causes for 
their long continuance in a state of crystallization or 
degradation after the stoppage has been effected. And 
I put it that these requirements can only be met by an 
hypothesis which directly appeals to the racial elements 
in the population. There is first the arresting force, 
identified with the higher culture sweeping over the 
lower ; there is then the continuing force, identified 
with the lower culture. 

Let us see how this works out. The most important 
fact to note in the examination of each fragment of 
folklore is the point of arrested development. Has the 
custom or belief, surviving by the side of much higher 



12 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

culture, been arrested in its development while it was 
simply a savage custom or belief ; when it was a barbaric 
custom or belief at a higher level than savagery ; when 
it was a national custom or belief discarded by the gov- 
erning class and obtaining locally ? 

Translating these factors in the characteristics of 
each item of folklore into terms of ethnology, it appears 
that we have at all events sufficient data for considering 
custom or belief which survives in the savage form as of 
different ethnic origin from custom or belief which sur- 
vives in higher forms. 

But if the incoming civilizations flowing over lower 
levels of culture in any given area have been many, 
there will be as many stages of arrestment in the folk- 
lore of that area, and in so far as each incoming civili- 
zation represents an ethnic distinction, the different 
stages of survival in folklore would also represent an 
ethnic distinction. 

The incoming civilizations in modern Europe are 
not all ethnic, as the most impressive has been Chris- 
tianity. It is impossible for the most casual reader 
to have left unnoticed the frequent evidence which is 
afforded of folklore being older than Christianity— hav- 
ing, in fact, been arrested in its development by Chris- 
tianity. But at the back of Christianity the incoming 
civilizations have been true ethnic distinctions, Scandi- 
navian, Teutonic, Eoman, Celtic, overflowing each other, 
and all of them superimposed upon the original unciv- 
ilization of the prehistoric races of non- Aryan stock. 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 13 

It appears to me that the clash of these races is still 
represented in folklore. It is not possible at the com- 
mencement of studies like the present to unravel all the 
various elements, and particularly is it impossible with 
our present knowledge to discriminate to any great ex- 
tent between the several branches of the Aryan race.* 
The biography of each item of Aryan custom and be- 
lief has not been examined into like the biography of 
each word of the Aryan tongue. This will have to be 
done before the work of the comparative sciences has 
been completed. But even with our limited knowledge 
of Aryan culture, it does seem possible to mark in folk- 
lore traces of an arrested development at the point of 
savagery, side by side with a further development which 
has not been arrested until well within the area of 
Aryan culture. 

This dual element in folklore, represented by a series 
of well-marked inconsistencies in peasant custom and 
belief, proves that the stages of development at which 
the several items of folklore have been arrested are not 
at the same level ; and they could not therefore have 
been produced by one arresting power. Thus the con- 
flict between paganism and Christianity is so obviously 

* Miss Burne has, I think, successfully distinguished between 
Welsh and English origins in the folklore of Shropshire (see her 
Shropshire Folklore, p. 462, and the map). And Lord Teign- 
mouth suggested that the prejudice against swine held by the 
Western Highlanders and Hebrideans indicates a difference of 
race from the Orcadians, who have no such prejudice. — Islands of 
Scotland, i, 276. 



U ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. 

a source to which the phenomenon of pagan survivals 
might be traced, that almost exclusive attention has 
been paid to it. It would account for one line of arrest- 
ment. It would have stopped the further progress of 
Aryan beliefs and customs represented in the Teutonic, 
Celtic, and Scandinavian culture, and it would corre- 
spondingly account for survivals at this point of arrest- 
ment. Survivals at a point of arrestment further back 
in the development of culture than the Aryan sti 
must have already existed under the pressure of Aryan 
culture. They must have been produced by a stoppage 
antecedent to Christianity, and must be identified, 
therefore, with the arrival of the Aryan race into a 
country occupied by non-Ayrans. 

If, then, I can show that there are, primarily, two 
lines of arrested development to be traced in folklore, 
these two lines must be represented the one by savage 
culture, which is not Aryan, the other by Aryan culture. 

It must, however, be pointed out that the relation- 
ship between what may be termed savagery and Aryan 
culture has not been formally set forth, though it seems 
certain that there is a considerable gap between the 
two, caused by a definite advance in culture by the 
Aryan race before its dispersal from the primitive home. 
This advance is the result of development, and where 
development takes place the originals from which it has 
proceeded disappear in the new forms thus produced. 
To adopt the terms of the manufactory, the original 
forms would have been all used up in the process of 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 15 

production. Hence, none of the savage culture from 
which may be traced the beginnings of Aryan culture 
can have survived among Aryan people. If items of it 
are found to exist side by side with Aryan culture in 
any country, such a phenomenon must be due to causes 
which have brought Aryan and savage races into close 
dwelling with each other, and can in no sense be in- 
terpreted as original forms existing side by side with 
those which have developed from them. I put this im- 
portant proposition forward without hesitation as a 
sound conclusion to be derived from the study of human 
culture. It is not possible in these pages to give the 
tests which I have applied to prove it, because they 
belong to the statistical side of our study, but I adduce 
Dr. Tylor's notable attempt to work out the method of 
studying institutions as sufficient evidence for my im- 
mediate purpose.* 

These somewhat dry technicalities are necessary in 
order to explain the basis of our present inquiry. Some 
years ago Sir John Lubbock said : " It can not be 
doubted that the careful study of manners and customs, 
traditions and superstitions, will eventually solve many 
difficult problems of ethnology. This mode of research, 
however, requires to be used with great caution, and has, 
in fact, led to many erroneous conclusions. . . . Much 
careful study will therefore be required before this class 
of evidence can be used with safety, though I doubt not 

* See Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 



10 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

that eventually it will be found most instructive." * It is 
singular what little progress has been made in this 
branch of work since this paragraph was written, and, 
indeed, how very generally the subject has been neg- 
lected, although now and again a passage in some of 
our best authorities suggests the necessity for some re- 
search being undertaken into the question of race dis- 
tinctions in custom and myth. Mr. Lang, for instance, 
when asking how the pure religion of Artemis had de- 
veloped from the cult of a ravening she-bear, puts the 
case forcibly thus : " Here is a moment in mythical and 
religious evolution which almost escapes inquiry. . . . 
How did the complex theory of the nature of Artemis 
arise ? What was its growth ? At what precise hour 
did it emancipate itself on the whole from the lower 
savage creeds ? Or how was it developed out of their 
unpromising materials? The science of mythology 
may perhaps never find a key to these obscure prob- 
lems." f But I think the science of folklore may go far 
toward the desired end. Its course would be to take 
note of the points of arrested development, and to 
classify what has survived in the savage stage and what 

* Origin of Civilization, p. 4. Dalyell, in some of his acute 
observations on superstition, says that he thought " it might be 
possible to connect the modern inhabitants of Scotland with the 
ancient tribes of other countries, and to trace their descent 
through the medium of superstitions." — Darker Superstitions of 
Scotland, p. 236. In 1835, when this book was published, this 
way of putting the relationship of one people with another had 
not been abolished by the work accomplished by anthropology. 

f Myth, Ritual, and Religion, ii, 215. 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 17 

is represented in the higher stages as being of two dis- 
tinct ethnic origins, and its conclusion would be that 
Artemis " succeeded to and threw her protection over 
an ancient worship of the animal," and that therefore 
the cult of Artemis and the local cults connected with 
it are as to race of different origin, and may both be 
called Greek in reference only to their final state of 
amalgamation in the land which the Aryan Greeks con- 
quered and named. 

One of the principal features of the Artemis cult is 
the extremely savage form of some of the local rituals, 
and it will frequently be found that localities preserve 
relics of a people much older than those who now in- 
habit them. Thus the daubing of the bridegroom's 
feet with soot in Scotland,* the painting with black 
substance of one of the characters in the Godiva ride at 
Southam in Warwickshire, f the daubing of the naked 
body in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, are ex- 
plained by none of the requirements of civilization, but 
by practices to be found in Africa and elsewhere. The 
ancestry of the Scottish, Warwickshire, and Greek cus- 
toms, therefore, may be traced back to a people on the 
level of culture with African savages. 

But when we come to ask who were the people who 
introduced this savage custom, we are for the first time 
conscious of the important question of race. Are we 

* Gregor, Folklore of Northeast Scotland, p. 90 ; Rogers, 
Social Life in Scotland, i, 110. 

f Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, p. 85. 



18 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

compelled to call them Scotchmen, Englishmen, or 
Greek ? Mr. Lang and Mr. Frazer would, I believe, 
answer " Yes " ; * and they are followed, consciously or 
unconsciously, by all other f olklorists. I shall attempt 
a somewhat different answer, the construction and 
proof of which will occupy the following pages. But as 
a preliminary justification for such a course I quote Dr. 
Tylor's warning : " The evidence of locality may be 
misleading as to race. A traveler in Greenland coming 
on the ruined stone buildings at Kakortok would not 
argue justly that the Esquimaux are degenerate de- 
scendants of ancestors capable of such architecture, for, 
in fact, these are the remains of a church and baptistry 
built by the ancient Scandinavian settlers." f Exactly. 
The long-chambered barrows, hill earthworks and culti- 
vation sites, cave dwellings and palaeolithic implements, 
are not attributable to Celt or Teuton. Can we, then, 
without substantial reason and without special inquiry, 
say that a custom or belief, however rude and savage, is 
Celtic, or Teutonic, or Greek, simply because it is extant 
in a country occupied in historic times by people speak- 
ing the language of any of these peoples ? 

A negative answer must clearly be returned to this 
question. The subject, no doubt, is a difficult one when 
thought of in connection with European countries. But 
in India, less leveled by civilization than the Western 
world, the ethnographer, with very little effort, can de- 

* Consult Mr. Lang's Custom and Myth, p. 26. 
f Primitive Culture, f, 51, 



SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 19 

tect ethnic distinctions in custom and belief. Stone 
worship in India, for instance, is classed by Dr. Tylor 
as " a survival of a rite belonging originally to a low 
civilization, probably a rite of the rude indigenes of the 
land."* But are not survivals of stone worship in 
Europe similarly to be classed as belonging to the rude 
indigenes of the land ? The log that stood for Artemis 
in Euboea, the stake that represented Pallas Athene, 
the unwrought stone at Hyettos which represented 
Herakles, the thirty stones which the Pharaeans wor- 
shiped for the gods, and the stone representing the 
Thespian Eros, may, with equal propriety, be classed as 
survivals of the non- Aryan indigenes of Greece. What 
may be rejected as belonging to the Aryans of India 
because there is distinct evidence of its belonging to the 
non- Aryans, can not be accepted without even an in- 
quiry as belonging to the Aryans of Greece. No doubt 
the difficulty of tracing direct evidence of the early non- 
Aryan races of Europe is very great, but it is no way 
out of the difficulty to ignore the fact that there exist 
survivals of savage culture which would readily be classi- 
fied as non- Aryan if it so happened that there now ex- 
isted certain tribes of non- Aryan people to whom they 
might be allotted. On the contrary, the existence of 
survivals of savage culture is prima facie evidence of the 
existence of races to whom this culture belonged and 
from whom it has descended. I do not mean to suggest 

* Primitive Culture, ii, 150. 



20 ETENOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

that in all places where items of non- Aryan culture have 
survived people of non- Aryan race have survived. Old 
races disappear while old customs last— carried on by 
successors, but not necessarily by descendants. The gen- 
ealogy of folklore carries us back to the race of people 
from whom it derives its parentage, but it does not neces- 
sarily carry back the genealogy of modern peasantry to 
the same race. This latter part of the question is a 
matter for ethnologists to deal with, and it may be that 
some unlooked-for results are yet to be derived from a 
close study of ethnic types in our local populations in 
relation to the folklore preserved by them. 



CHAPTEE II. 

ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOH AND RITUAL. 

It is necessary now to test by the evidence of actual 
example the hypothesis that race distinction is the true 
explanation of the strange inconsistency which is met 
with in folklore. There should be evidence somewhere, 
if such a hypothesis is tenable, that the almost un- 
checked conclusions of scholars are not correct when 
they argue that because a custom or belief, however sav- 
age and rude, obtained in Kome or in Greece, in Ger- 
man or Celtic countries of modern Europe, it is Eoman, 
Greek, German, or Celtic throughout all its variations. 

For this purpose an example must be found which 
will comply with certain conditions. It must obtain in 
a country overlorded by an Aryan people, and still occu- 
pied by non- Aryan indigenes. It must consist of dis- 
tinct divisions, showing the part taken by Aryans and 
the part taken by non- Aryans. And as such an ex- 
ample can scarcely be found in Europe, it must at 
least be paralleled in the folklore of Europe, if not in 
all its constituent parts, at all events in all the essential 
details. 

Such an example is to be found in India. I shall 



22 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

first of all set forth the principal points which are neces- 
sary to note in this example in the words, as nearly as 
possible, of the authority I quote, so that the comments 
which it will be necessary to make upon it may not in- 
terfere with the evidence as it stands originally recorded. 

The festival of the village goddess is honored 
throughout all southern India and in other parts, from 
Berar to the extreme east of Bustar and in Mysore. She 
is generally adored in the form of an unshapely stone 
covered with vermilion. A small altar is erected behind 
the temple of the village goddess to a rural god named 
Potraj. All the members of the village community 
take part in the festival, with the hereditary district 
officers, many of them Brahmans. 

An examination of the ritual belonging to this vil- 
lage festival enables us not only to detect the presence 
of race distinctions and of practices which belong to 
them, but compels us to conclude that the whole cere- 
mony originated in race distinctions. 

The festival is under the guidance and management 
of the Parias, who act as officiating priests. With them 
are included the Mangs or workers in leather, the Asadis 
or Dasaris, Paria dancing-girls devoted to the service of 
the temple, the musician in attendance on them, who 
acts as a sort of jester or buffoon, and a functionary 
called Potraj, who officiates aspujciri to the god of the 
same name. The shepherds or Dhangars of the neigh- 
boring villages are also invited. Of these the Parias are 
an outcast people, degraded in the extreme, and always 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 23 

excluded from the village and from contact with the in- 
habitants. They are identified with the Paraya, a south- 
ern aboriginal 'tribe nearly allied to the Gonds. The 
shepherd caste is found throughout the greater part of 
the Dekkan in detached communities, called Kurum- 
bars, Kurubars, and Dhangars, in different parts of In- 
dia. These are the non- Aryan races who take part in 
this Aryan village festival ; they occupy, the foremost 
place during the festival, and at its termination they 
retire to their hamlets outside the town and resume 
their humble servile character. From these facts Sir 
W. Elliot has deduced as probable conclusions that the 
earliest known inhabitants of southern India were an 
aboriginal race, who worshiped local divinities, the tute- 
lary gods of earth, hill, grove, and boundaries, etc., and 
that this worship has been blended in practice with that 
of the Aryan overlords. 

The principal parts of the ritual which it is useful 
for us to note are as follows : The Potraj priest was 
armed with a long whip, to which at various parts of 
the ceremony divine honors were paid. The sacred 
buffalo was turned loose when a calf, and allowed to 
feed and roam about the village. On the second day 
this animal was thrown down before the goddess, its 
head struck off by a single blow, and placed in front 
of the shrine with one foreleg thrust into its mouth. 
Around were placed vessels containing the different 
cereals, and hard by a heap of mixed grains with a drill- 
plow in the center. The carcass was then cut up into 



24 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

small pieces, and each cultivator received a portion to 
bury in his field. The blood and offal were collected 
into a large basket over which some pots of cooked food 
had previously been broken, and Potraj, taking a live 
kid, hewed it to pieces over the whole. The mess was 
then mixed together, and the basket being placed on 
the head of a naked Mang, he ran off with it, flinging 
the contents into the air and scattering them right and 
left as an offering to the evil spirits, and followed by the 
other Parias. The whole party made the circuit of the 
village. 

The third and fourth days were devoted to private 
offerings. On the former, all the inhabitants of caste 
who had vowed animals to the goddess during the pre- 
ceding three years for the welfare of their families or 
the fertility of their fields brought the buffaloes or 
sheep to the Paria pujdri, who struck off their heads. 
The fourth day is appropriated exclusively to the offer- 
ings of the Parias. In this way some fifty or sixty 
buffaloes and several hundred sheep were slain, and the 
heads piled up in two great heaps. Many women on 
these days walked naked to the temple in fulfillment of 
vows, but they were covered with leaves and boughs of 
trees, and surrounded by their female relations and 
friends. 

On the fifth and last day the whole community 
marched in procession with music to the temple, and 
offered a concluding sacrifice at the Potraj altar. A 
lamb was concealed close by. The Potraj having found 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 25 

it after a pretended search, struck it simply with his 
whip, which he then placed upon it, and making several 
passes with his hands rendered it insensible. His hands 
were then tied behind his back by the pujdri, and the 
whole party began to dance round him with noisy 
shouts. Potraj joined in the excitement, and he soon 
came fully under the influence of the deity. He was 
led up, still bound, to the place where the lamb lay mo- 
tionless. He rushed at it, seized it with his teeth, tore 
through the skin, and ate into its throat. When it was 
quite dead he was lifted up, a dishful of the meat-offer- 
ing was presented to him ; he thrust his bloody face into 
it, and it was then with the remains of the lamb buried 
beside the altar. Meantime his hands were untied, and 
he fled the place. 

The rest of the party now adjourned to the front of 
the temple, where the heap of grain deposited the first 
day was divided among all the cultivators, to be buried 
by each one in his field with the bit of flesh. After this 
a distribution of the piled-up heads was made by the 
hands of the musician or Eaniga. About forty sheep's 
heads were given to certain privileged persons, among 
which two were allotted to the sircar. For the rest a 
general scramble took place — paiks, shepherds, Parias, 
and many boys and men of good caste were soon rolling 
in the mass of putrid gore. The scramble for the buffa- 
lo-heads was confined to the Parias. Whoever was for- 
tunate enough to secure one of either kind carried it off 
and buried it in his field. 



26 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

The proceedings terminated by a procession round 
the boundaries of the village lands, preceded by the 
goddess and the head of the sacred buffalo carried on 
the head of one of the Mangs. All order and propriety 
now ceased. Eaniga began to abuse the goddess in the 
foulest language ; he then turned his fury against the 
Government, the head man of the village, and every 
one who fell in his way. The Parias and Asadis at- 
tacked the most respectable and gravest citizens, and 
laid hold of Brahmans, Lingayats, and zamindars with- 
out scruple. The dancing - women jumped on their 
shoulders, the shepherds beat the big drum, and uni- 
versal license prevailed. 

On reaching a little temple sacred to the goddess of 
boundaries, they halted to make some offerings and to 
bury the sacred head. As soon as it was covered the up- 
roar began again. Eaniga became more foul-mouthed 
than ever, and the head men, the Government officers, 
and others tried to pacify him by giving him small cop- 
per coins. This went on till, the circuit being com- 
pleted, all dispersed.* 

It has been worth while transcribing here this elabo- 
rate description of a veritable folk drama because it is 
necessary to have before us the actual details of the 
ritual observed and the beliefs expressed before we can 
properly attempt a comparison. 

We must now ascertain how far European folklore 

* Sir W. Elliot, in Journ. Ethnological Soc, N. S. i, 97-100. 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 27 

tallies with the ceremonies observed in this Indian vil- 
lage festival. If there is a strong line of parallel be- 
tween the Indian ceremonies and some ceremonies still 
observed in Europe as survivals of a forgotten and un- 
recognized cult, I shall argue that ceremonies which are 
demonstrably non-Aryan in India, even in the presence 
of Aryan people, must in origin have been non-Aryan 
in Europe, though the race from whom they have de- 
scended is not at present identified by ethnologists. 

I shall not at this juncture dwell upon the unshapen 
stone which represented the goddess. Its parallels exist 
throughout the whole range of early religions, and, as 
we have already seen, appear in the folklore of Europe. 
As the Kafirs of India say of the stones they use, " This 
stands for God, but we know not his shape."* All the 
more need for it to be unshapen by men's hands, and 
the history of the sacred use of monoliths commences at 
this point f and ends with the sculptured glories of 
Greece. J Later on some special forms of stone deities 
will be noticed ; it is the use of a stone as a sort of altar 
of the goddess, who is not identical with it, and the 
recognition of stone worship as a part of the aboriginal 
cult, and not Aryan,* which interests us now. 

This stone is the place of sacrifice to the harvest 

* Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, ii, 240. 

f Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of (he Semites, pp. 186-195 ; 
Ellis, Ewe-speaking People, p. 28. 

% See an able article in the Archceological Review, ii, 167-184, 
by Mr. Farnell. 

# Arch. Survey of India, xvi, 141. 



28 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

goddess, and the ceremonial observed at the Indian fes- 
tival directs us at once to the local observances con- 
nected with the cult of Dionysus. The Cretans in rep- 
resenting the sufferings and death of Dionysus tore a 
bull to pieces with their teeth ; indeed, says Mr. Frazer, 
quoting the authority of Euripides, the rending and de- 
vouring of live bulls and calves appears to have been a 
regular feature of the Dionysiac rites, and his worship- 
ers also rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw. 
At Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to the god was 
shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a 
woman in childbed — sure proof of the symbolization of 
human sacrifice, which indeed actually took place at 
Chios and at Orchomenus.* These are virtually the 
same practices as those now going on in India, and the 
identification is confirmed by the facts (1) that Dionysus 
is sometimes represented to his worshipers by his head 
only — a counterpart of the sacred character of the head 
in the Indian rites ; (2) that the sacrificer of the calf at 
Tenedos was, after the accomplishment of the rite, driv- 
en out from the place and stoned — a counterpart of the 
Potraj fleeing the place after the sacrifice of the lamb in 
the Indian ceremony ; and (3) that the female worship- 
ers of Dionysus attended in a nude state, crowned with 
garlands, and their bodies daubed over with clay and 
dirt — a counterpart of the female votaries who attended 

* Mr. Frazer has collected all the references to these facts in 
his Golden Bough, i, 326-329 ; see also Lang, Custom and Myth, 
ii, 231-234. 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 29 

naked and surrounded with branches of trees at the 
Indian festival. 

I have selected this cult of the Greeks for the pur- 
pose of comparing it with the non-Aryan ceremonial of 
India, because it has recently been examined with all 
the wealth of illustration and comparison by two such 
great authorities as Mr. Lang and Mr. Frazer. They 
have stripped it of most of the fanciful surroundings 
with which German and English mythologists have re- 
cently loaded it, and once more restored the local rituals 
and the central myth as the true sources from which to 
obtain information as to its origin. At almost every 
point the details of the local rituals are comparable, not 
to Greek conceptions of Dionysus, " a youth with clus- 
ters of golden hair and in his dark eyes the grace of 
Aphrodite," but to the ferocious and barbaric practices 
of savages. Then where is the evidence of the Greek 
origin of these local observances ? Greek religious 
thought was far in advance of them. It stooped to 
admit them within the rites of the god Dionysus, 
but in this act there was a conscious borrowing by 
Greeks of something lower in the stage of culture than 
Greek culture, and that something has been character- 
ized by a recent commentator as appertaining to " the 
divinities of the common people." * This is very near 

* Dyer's Gods of Greece, p. 123. Mr. Dyer says : " The most 
painstaking security, the minutest examination of such evidence 
as may be had, will never disentangle completely, never make 
perfectly plain, just what elements constituted the Dionysus first 



30 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

to the race distinction I am in search of. The common 
people of Crete, Tenedos, Chios, and Orchomenus were 
not necessarily Aryan Greeks, and, judged by their 
savage customs, they most likely stood in the same re- 
lationship to the Aryans of Greece as the Parias of the 
Indian villages stand to their Aryan overlords. 

I pass from Greek folklore to English. It would be 
easy to extend research right across Europe, especially 
with Mr. Frazer's aid, but it is scarcely necessary. A 
Whitsuntide custom in the parish of King's Teignton, 
Devonshire, is thus described : A lamb is drawn about 
the parish on Whitsun Monday in a cart covered with 
garlands of lilac, laburnum, and other flowers, when 
persons are requested to give something toward the ani- 
mal and attendant expenses ; on Tuesday it is then 
killed and roasted whole in the middle of the village. 
The lamb is then sold in slices to the poor at a cheap 
rate. The origin of the custom is forgotten, but a tra- 
dition, supposed to trace back to heathen days, is to this 
effect : The village suffered from a dearth of water, 

worshiped in early Greece. His character was composite from 
the moment Greeks worshiped him ; for in Bceotia (Hesychius) 
as in Attica (Pausanias, xxxi, 4) and in Naxos (Athenaeus, iii, 78), 
some part of him was native to the soil, and he was nowhere 
wholly Thracian." — Gods of Greece, p. 82. Mr. Dyer had prob- 
ably not studied Mr. Frazer's book when this passage was written, 
but it shows the opinions of specialists who have not called in the 
aid of ethnology. That part of Dionysus which was " native to 
the soil " was not Greek ; the Greeks were immigrants to the land 
they adorned as their home, and the Dionysus "native to the 
soil" was shaped by them into the Athenian Dionysus. 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 31 

when the inhabitants were advised by their priests to 
pray to the gods for water ; whereupon the water sprang 
up spontaneously in a meadow about a third of a mile 
above the river, in an estate now called Kydon, amply 
sufficient to supply the wants of the place, and at pres- 
ent adequate, even in a dry summer, to work three 
mills. A lamb, it is said, has ever since that time been 
sacrificed as a votive thank-offering at Whitsuntide in 
the manner before mentioned. The said water appears 
like a large pond, from which in rainy weather may be 
seen jets springing up some inches above the surface in 
many parts. It has ever had the name of " Fair Wa- 
ter."* It is noticeable that, while the custom here 
described does not present any very extraordinary feat- 
ures, the popular legend concerning its origin introduces 
two very important elements — namely, its reference to 
" heathen days " and the title of " sacrifice " ascribed to 
the killing of the lamb. The genealogy of this custom, 
then, promises to take us back to the era of heathen 
sacrifice of animals. 

The first necessity in tracing the genealogy is to 
analyze the custom as it obtains in nineteenth-century 
Devonshire. The analysis gives the following results : 

1. The decoration of the victim lamb with garlands. 

2. The killing and roasting of the victim by villagers. 

3. The place of the ceremony in the middle of the 
village. 

* Notes and Queries, vii, 353. 



32 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

4. The selling of the roasted flesh to the poor. 

x. The traditional origin of the custom as a sacrifice 
for water. 

It seems clear that between the fourth step of the 
analysis and the traditional origin there are some consid- 
erable lacunae to be filled up which prevent us at present 
from numbering the last item. The more primitive 
elements of this custom have been worn down to van- 
ishing point, the practice probably being considered but 
an old-fashioned and cumbrous method of relieving 
distressed parishioners before the poor law had otherwise 
provided for them. Another example from Devonshire 
fortunately overlaps this one, and permits the restora- 
tion of the lost elements, and the consequent carrying 
back of the genealogy. 

At the village of Holne, situated on one of the spurs 
of Dartmoor, is a field of about two acres, the property 
of the parish, and called the Ploy Field. In the center 
of this field stands a granite pillar (Menhir) six or seven 
feet high. On May morning, before daybreak, the 
young men of the village used to assemble there, and 
then proceed to the moor, where they selected a ram 
lamb, and, after running it down, brought it in triumph 
to the Ploy Field, fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, 
and then roasted it whole, skin, wool, etc. At midday 
a struggle took place, at the risk of cut hands, for a 
slice, it being supposed to confer luck for the ensuing 
year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry 
the young men sometimes fought their way through the 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 33 

crowd to get a slice for the chosen among the young 
women, all of whom, in their best dresses, attended the 
Earn Feast, as it was called. Dancing, wrestling, and 
other games, assisted by copious libations of cider during 
the afternoon, prolonged the festivity till midnight.* 

Analyzing this example, and keeping to the notation 
of the first analysis, we have the following results : — 

2. The killing and roasting of the victim ram by 
villagers. 

3. The place of the ceremony, at a stone pillar in a 
field which is common property. 

4. The struggle for pieces of raw flesh " at the risk 
of cut hands." 

5. The time of the ceremony, before daybreak. 

6. The luck conferred by the possession of a slice of 
the flesh. 

7. The festivities attending the ceremony. 

Thus, of the five elements in the King's Teignton 
custom, three are retained in the Holne custom, and 
three additional ones of importance are added. 

I think we may conclude, first, that the Holne cus- 
tom is a more primitive form of a common original from 
which both have descended; secondly, that we may 
strike out the " roasting " as an entirely civilized ele- 

* Notes and Queries, 1st ser., vii, 353. Compare Robertson 
Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 320, and Owen, Notes on the 
Naga Tribes, pp. 15-16, for some remarkable parallels to this 
Devonshire custom. I would also refer to Miss Burne's sugges- 
tive description of the bull sacrifice in her Shropshire Folklore, p. 
475. 



34 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

ment due to modern influences. The final form of the 
analysis might then be restored from the two fragment- 
ary ones as follows : 

1. The decoration of the victim with garlands. 

2. The killing of the victim by the community. 

3. The place of the ceremony, on lands belonging to 
the community, and at a stone pillar. 

4. The struggle for pieces of flesh by members of 
the community. 

5. The time of the ceremony, before daybreak. 

6. The sacred power of the piece of flesh. 

7. The festivities attending the ceremony. 

8. The origin of the ceremony, as a sacrifice to the 
god of waters. 

The obvious analogy this bears to the Indian type 
we are examining scarcely needs to be insisted on, and I 
shall leave it to take its place among the group of Euro- 
pean parallels. 

The special sanctity of the head of the sacrificed vic- 
tim, so apparent in the Indian festival, appears in Euro- 
pean paganism and folklore in several places.* The 
Longobards adorned a divinely honored goat's head.f 
A well-known passage in Tacitus, describing the sacred 
groves of the Germans, states that the heads of the ani- 
mals hung on boughs of trees, or, as it is noted in an- 
other passage, " immolati diis equi abscissum caput." 

* Compare Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 359, 
362. 

f Grimm, Teutonic Myth, p. 31. 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 35 

Heathendom, says Grimm, seems to have practiced all 
sorts of magic by cutting off horses' heads and sticking 
them up,* and he quotes examples from Scandinavia, 
Germany, and Holland. Passing on to folklore, we find 
that the witches of Germany in the thirteenth century 
were accused of adoring a beast's head.f A fox's head 
was nailed to the stable door in some parts of Scotland to 
bar the entrance of witches. J Camden has noted a cu- 
rious ceremony obtaining at St. Paul's Cathedral. " I have 
heard," he says, " that the stag which the family of Le 
Baud in Essex was bound to pay for certain lands used 
to be received at the steps of the church by the priests 
in their sacerdotal robes and with garlands of flowers on 
their heads " ; and as a boy he saw a stag's head fixed 
on a spear and conveyed about within the church with 
great solemnity and sounds of horns.* At Hornchurch, 
in Essex, a singular ceremony is recorded. The lessee 
of the tithes supplies a boar's head, dressed, and gar- 
nished with bay- leaves. In the afternoon of Christmas 
Day it is carried in procession into the field adjoining 
the churchyard, where it is wrestled for. || 

These customs are also confirmed by the records of 
archaeology. In the belfry of Elsdon Church, Northum- 

* Grimm, Teutonic Myth, p. 659. \ lhid ' P- 1065 ' 
% Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 148. 

* Britannia, Holland's translation, p. 426. 

I Notes and Queries, 1st Ser., v, 106 ; Gentleman's Magazine 
Library — Manners and Customs, p. 221. It is also curious to 
note that leaden horns are fastened over the east part of the 
church. 



36 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

berland, wore discovered in 1877 the skeletons of three 
horses 1 heads. They were in a small chamber, evidently 
formed to receive them, and the spot was the highest 
part of the church ; they were piled one against the 
other in a triangular form, the jaws being uppermost.* 

I will not do more than say that these items of folk- 
lore, following those which relate to the sacrifice of the 
animal, confirm the parallel which is being sought for 
between the living ceremonial of Indian festivals and 
the surviving peasant custom in European folklore, and 
I pass on from the victims of the sacrifice to the actors 
in the scene. All the latent savagery exhibited in the 
action of tearing the victim to pieces has been noted 
both in the Indian type and in its folklore parallels. 
One might be tempted, perhaps, to draw attention to 
the curious parallel which the use of the whip by the 
Potraj of the Indian village bears to the gad-whip serv- 
ice at Caistor, in Lincolnshire, especially as the whip 
here used is bound round with pieces of that magic 
plant the rowan-tree, and by tradition is connected with 
the death of a human being, f But this analogy may 
be one of the accidents of comparative studies, inas- 
much as it is not supported by cumulative or other 
confirmatory evidence. No such reason need detain us 
from considering the fact of women offering their vows 
at the festival in a nude condition, covered only with 
the leaves and boughs of trees, because it is easy to turn 

* Berwickshire Xaturalists' Field Club, ix, 510. 
f Arch, Journ., vi, 239. 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 37 

to the folklore parallels to this custom, in Mr. Hart- 
land's admirable study of the Godiva legend. 

Every one knows this legend, which, together with 
all details as to date and earliest literary forms, is ex- 
plained by Mr. Hartland.* I shall therefore turn to the 
essential points. The ride of the Lady Godiva naked 
through the streets of Coventry is the legend told to ac- 
count for an annual procession among the municipal 
pageants of that town. The converse view, that the 
pageant arose out of the legend, is disproved by the 
facts. To meet this theory the legend would have to 
be founded upon a definite historical fact concerning 
only the place to which it relates, namely, Coventry. 
For this, as Mr. Hartland shows, there is absolutely no 
proof ; and parallels exist in two other places, one in 
the shape of an annual procession, the other in the 
shape of a legend only. I pass over the many interest- 
ing traces of the legend in folktales which Mr. Hartland 
has so learnedly collected and commented upon, and 
proceed to notice the other examples in England. 

The first occurs at Southam, a village not far from 
Coventry. " Very little is known about it now, save 
one singular fact — namely, that there were two Godivas 
in the cavalcade, and one of them was black." f The 

* Science of Fairy Tales, p. 71 et seq. 

f Hartland, op. cit., p. 85. This important discovery of Mr. 
Hartland's may fairly be compared with the " dirty practice of the 
Greeks" in the Dionysian mysteries noted above, a counterpart of 
which Mr. Lang some years ago could not find in modern folklore. 
— Folklore Record, ii, introd., p. ii. 



38 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

second occurs at St. Briavels, in Gloucestershire. Here 
the privilege of cutting and taking the wood in Hud- 
nolls, and the custom of distributing yearly upon Whit- 
sunday pieces of bread and cheese to the congregation 
at church, are connected by tradition with a right ob- 
tained of some Earl of Hereford, then lord of the forest 
of Dean, at the instance of his lady, " upon the same 
hard terms that Lady Godiva obtained the privilege for 
the citizens of Coventry." * 

Thus, then, we have as the basis for considering 
these singular survivals : 

(a) The Coventry legend and ceremony, kept up as 
municipal custom, and recorded as early as the thir- 
teenth century by Roger of Wendover. 

(5) The Southam ceremony, kept up as local custom, 
unaccompanied by any legend as to origin. 

(c) The St. Briavels legend, not recorded until toward 
the end of the eighteenth century, and accompanied by 
a totally different custom. 

This variation in the local methods of keeping up 
this remarkable survival is one of some significance in 
the consideration of its origin, f and I now go on to 
compare it with an early ceremony in Britain, as noted 
by Pliny : " Both matrons and girls," says this authority, 
" among the people of Britain are in the habit of stain- 

* Rudder, History of Gloucestershire, 1779, p. 307; Gomme, 
Gentleman's Magazine Library — Manners and Customs, p. 230 ; 
Hartland, op. cit., p. 78. 

\ Folklore, i, 12. 



ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 39 

ing their body all over with woad when taking part in 
the performance of certain sacred rites ; rivaling thereby 
the swarthy hue of the Ethiopians, they go in a state of 
nature." * Between the customs and legends of modern 
folklore and the ancient practice of the Britons there is 
intimate connection, and the parallel thus afforded to 
the Indian festival seems complete. The attendance of 
votaries at a religious festival in a state of nudity has 
also been kept up in another form. At Stirling, on one 
of the early days of May, boys of ten and twelve years 
old divest themselves of clothing, and in a state of 
nudity run round certain natural or artificial circles. 
Formerly the rounded summit of Demyat, an eminence 
in the Ochil range, was a favorite scene of this strange 
pastime, but for many years it has been performed at 
the King's Knot in Stirling, an octagonal mound in the 
Royal gardens. The performances are not infrequently 
repeated at Midsummer and Lammas, f The fact that 
in this instance the practice is continued only by " boys 
of ten and twelve years old " shows that we have here 
one of the last stages of an old rite before its final abo- 
lition. It would have been difficult, perhaps, to attach 
much importance to this example as a survival of a rude 
prehistoric cult unless we had previously discussed the 
Godiva forms of it. But any one acquainted with the 

* Nat. Hist., lib. xxii, cap. 1. I think the passage in the poem 
of Dionysius Periegeta about the rites of the Amnites may be 
compared, the women being " decked in the dark-leaved ivy's 
clustering buds." See Mori. Hist. Brit., p. xvii. 

f Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii, 240. 
4 



40 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

frequent change of personnel in the execution of cere- 
monies sanctioned only by the force of local tradition will 
have little difficulty in conceding that the Scottish cus- 
tom has a place in the series of folklore items which 
connects the Godiva ceremony with the religious rites of 
the ancient Britons as recorded by Pliny, thus cement- 
ing the close parallel which the whole bears to the In- 
dian village festival. 

I think it will be admitted that these parallels are 
sufficiently obvious to suggest that they tell the same 
story both in India and Europe. They do not, by actual 
proof, belong to the Aryans of India ; they do not, there- 
fore, by legitimate conclusion, belong to the Aryans of 
Europe. 

But it may be argued that customs which in India 
are parts of one whole can not be compared with cus- 
toms in Europe which are often isolated and sometimes 
associated with other customs. The argument will not 
hold good if the conditions of survivals in folklore al- 
ready set forth are duly considered. But it can be met 
by the test of evidence. Some of the customs which in 
south India form a part of the festival of the village 
goddess are in other parts of India and in other coun- 
tries independent customs, or associated with other sur- 
roundings altogether, thus substantiating my suggestion 
that this village festival of India has been welded to- 
gether by the influence of races antagonistic to each 
other, which have been compelled to live together side 
by side for a long period. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MYTHIC IKFLUEKCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 

It appears, then, that the influence of a conquered 
race does not die out so soon as the conquerors are es- 
tablished. Their religious customs and ritual are still 
observed under the new regime, and in some cases, as in 
India, very little, if any attempt is made to disguise 
their indigenous origin. Another influence exerted by 
the conquered over the conquerors is more subtle. It 
is not the adoption or extension of existing customs 
and beliefs, or the evolution of a new stage in custom 
and belief in consequence of the amalgamation. It is 
the creation of an entirely new influence, based on the 
fear which the conquered have succeeded in creating in 
the minds of the conquerors. 

Has any one attempted to realize the effects of a per- 
manent residence of a civilized people amidst a lower 
civilization, the members of which are cruel, crafty, and 
unscrupulous? In some regions of fiction, such as 
Kingsley's " Hereward " and Lytton's " Harold," a sort 
of picture has been drawn — a picture drawn and col- 
ored, however, in times far separated from those which 
witnessed the events. Fenimore Cooper has attempted 



42 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. 

the task with better materials in his stories of the white 
man and his relations to the red Indians. But by far 
the truest accounts are to be found in the dry records 
of official history. One such record has been transferred 
to the archives of the Anthropological Institute,* and it 
would be described by any ordinary reader as a record 
of the doings of demons. 

Of course this phraseology is figurative. But figures 
of speech very often survive from the figures of the 
ancient mythic conceptions of actual events, and though 
we should simply style the doings of the Tasmanians 
fighting against the whites demoniacal as an appropri- 
ate figure of speech, people of a low T er culture, and our 
own peasantry a few years back, would believe them to 
be demoniacal in the literal sense of that term. Iso 
one will doubt that there is much in savage warfare to 
suggest these ideas, and when it is remembered that 
savage warfare is waged by one tribe against another 
simply because they are strangers to each other— that 
not to be a member of a tribe is to be an enemy — it will 
not be surprising that the condition of hostility has pro- 
duced its share of superstition. 

It is the hostility between races, not the hostility 
between tribes of the same race, that has produced the 
most marked form of superstition ; and it may be put 
down as one of the axioms of our science that the hos- 
tility of races wherever they dwell long together in close 

* Journ. Anthrop. Inst., iii., 9 ; cf. Nilsson's Primitive Inhabit- 
ants of Scandinavia, p. 176. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 43 

contact has always produced superstition. Unfortu- 
nately no examples of this have been noted by travelers 
as a general rule, but there is ample evidence in sup- 
port of the statement, and I shall adduce some. 

The inland tribes of New Guinea are distinct from 
those of the coast,* but the spirit beliefs of the coast 
tribes which are described as being unusually prevalent 
are chiefly derived from their fear of the aboriginal 
tribes. They believe, says Mr. Lawes, when the natives 
are in the neighborhood that the whole plain is full of 
spirits who come with them ; all calamities are attrib- 
uted to the power and malice of these evil spirits; 
drought, famine, storm and flood, disease and death, are 
all supposed to be brought by Vata and his hosts, f In 
this case the aborigines are represented as accompanied 
by their own spiritual guardians, who wage war upon 
the new-comers. In other cases aboriginal people are 
credited with the power of exercising demon functions 
or assuming demon forms. Thus every tribe in West- 
ern Australia holds those to the north of it in especial 
dread, imputing to them an immense power of enchant- 
ment ; and this, says Mr. Oldfield, seems to justify the 
inference that the peopling of New Holland has taken 
place from various points toward the north. J The 
Hova tribes of Madagascar deified the Vazimba aborig- 
ines, and still consider their tombs as the most sacred 

* Romilly, From my Veranda, p. 249. 

f Trans. Geog. Soc, N. S., ii, 615. 

X Trans. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., iii, 216, 235, 236. 



44 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

objects in the country. These spirits are supposed to 
be of two kinds — the kindly disposed and the fierce and 
cruel. Some are said to inhabit the water, while others 
are terrestrial in their habits, and they are believed to 
appear to those who seek their aid in dreams, warning 
them and directing them.* In the case of the Ainos, 
the supposed aborigines of Japan, the subject and object 
of the superstition seem to be reversed, for it is the 
Ainos who are superstitiously afraid of the Japanese ; f 
but it is to be observed that the ethnology of the Ainos, 
and their place in the country prior to the present con- 
dition of things, have not been sufficiently examined. 
Certainly their position in this group of superstitions 
will need consideration. Two examples may be men- 
tioned of the attitude of Malays to their conquered foes. 
To a Malay an aboriginal Jakun is a supernatural being 
endowed with a supernatural power and with an un- 
limited knowledge of the secrets of nature ; he must be 
skilled in divination, sorcery, and fascination, and able 
to do either evil or good according to his pleasure ; his 
blessing will be followed by the most fortunate success, 
and his curse by the most dreadful consequences. When 
he hates some person he turns himself toward the 
house, strikes two sticks one upon the other, and, what- 
ever may be the distance, his enemy will fall sick and 

* Anthrop. Inst., v, 190 ; Sibree, Madagascar, p. 135 ; Ellis, 
Madagascar, i, 123, 423. 

f Trans. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., vii, 24. Mr. Bickmore in this 
paper makes some very pertinent suggestions as to the probable 
ethnic origin of the Ainos. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 45 

even die if he perseveres in that exercise for a few days. 
Besides, to a Malay the Jakun is a man who by his na- 
ture must necessarily know all the properties of every 
plant, and consequently must be a clever physician, and 
the Malay when sick will obtain his assistance, or at 
least get some medicinal plants from him. The Jakun 
is also gifted with the power of charming the wild 
beasts, even the most ferocious.* The second example 
includes the Chinese. The Malays and Chinese of Ma- 
lacca have implicit faith in the supernatural power of 
the Poyangs, and believe that many others among the 
aborigines are imbued with it. Hence they are careful 
to avoid offending them in any way, because it is be- 
lieved they take offense deeply to heart, and will sooner 
or later, by occult means, revenge themselves. The 
Malays resort to them for the cure of diseases. Ee- 
venge also not infrequently sends them to the Poyangs, 
whose power they invoke to cause disease and other mis- 
fortune, or even death, to those who have injured them.f 
The Burmese and Siamese hold the hill tribes, the 
Lawas, in great dread, believing them to be man-bears. J 
The Budas of Abyssinia are looked upon as sorcerers 
and werewolves.* 

These examples will serve to show the influences at 
work for the production of superstitious beliefs arising 

* Joum. 2nd. Arch., ii, 273-274. f Ibid., i, 328. 

X Colquhoun's Amongst the Shans, p. 52 ; Bastian, (Estl. Asien., 
i, 119. 

* Hall's Life of Nathaniel Pearce, i, 286, 



46 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

out of the hostility of races. My next point is to illus- 
trate this principle in connection with the Aryan race. 
Do they, like the inferior races, endow with superhuman 
faculties the non- Aryan aborigines against whom they 
have fought in every land where they have become 
masters ? 

Again, we must turn to India for an answer to our 
question. The mountain ranges and great jungle tracts 
of southern India, says Mr. Walhouse, are inhabited by 
semi-savage tribes, who, there is good reason to believe, 
once held the fertile open plains, and were the builders 
of those megalithic sepulchres which abound over the 
cultivated country.* All these races are regarded by 
their Hindu masters with boundless contempt, and held 
unspeakably unclean. Yet there are many curious rights 
and privileges which the despised castes possess and te- 
naciously retain. Some of these in connection with the 
village festival, which has been examined at length, we 
already know. On certain days they may enter temples 
which at other times they must not approach ; there 
are several important ceremonial and social observances 
which they are always called upon to inaugurate or 
take some share in, and which, indeed, says Mr. Wal- 
house, would be held incomplete and unlucky without 
them. But, what is more important for our immediate 
purpose, Mr. Walhouse also says that " the contempt and 
loathing in w T hich they are ordinarily held are curiously 

* Journ. Anthrop. Inst., iv, 371. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 47 

tinctured with superstitious fear, for they are believed 
to possess secret powers of magic and witchcraft and in- 
fluence with the old malignant deities of the soil who 
can direct good or evil fortune."* I lay stress upon 
this passage because in it is contained virtually the 
whole of the evidence I am seeking for. It is supported 
by abundant testimony, brought together with clearness 
and precision by Mr. Walhouse, and it is confirmed by 
many other authorities, whom it would be tedious to 
quote at length. To this day, says Colonel Dalton, the 
Aryans settled in Chota Nagpore and Singbhoom firmly 
believe that the Moondahs have powers as wizards and 
witches, and can transform themselves into tigers and 
other beasts of prey with a view to devouring their ene- 
mies, and that they can witch away the lives of man and 
beast. f The Hindus, Latham tells us, regard the Katodi 
with awe, believing that they can transform themselves 
into tigers. J I will finally quote the evidence from Cey- 
lon. " The wild ignorant savages " who inhabited this 
island when the Hindus conquered it are termed by the 
chroniclers demons,* and demonism in Ceylon, origi- 
nating with this non- Aryan aboriginal people, has grown 
into a cult. 

* Journ. Anthrop. Inst., iv, 371-372. 

f Trans. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., vi. 6 ; Journ. As. Soc Bengal, 
1866, part ii, 158. How these beliefs react on the non- Aryan races 
among themselves may be ascertained by referring to the Toda 
beliefs noted in Trans. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., vii, 247, 277, 287. 

% Descriptive Ethnology, ii, 457. 

# Journ. As. Soc. Ceylon, 1865-66, p. 3 ; Tennent's Ceylon, i, 



48 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

It bears on the question of the relationship between 
conquerors and conquered which has been illustrated by 
this evidence to observe that Professor Kobertson Smith, 
from evidence apart from that I have used, has rele- 
gated demonism to the position of a cult hostile to and 
separate from the tribal beliefs of early people.* 

I feel quite sure that the examples I have drawn 
from the history of savagery, and from the history of 
the conflict between Chinese and Hindu civilization 
and savagery, have already enabled the reader to detect 
many points of contact between these and the history 
of demonism and witchcraft in the Western world. I 
shall examine some of those points of contact, and then 
I shall turn to some more debatable matter. 

The demonism of savagery is parallel to the witch- 
craft of civilization in the power which votaries of the 
two cults profess, and are allowed by their believers to 
possess, over the elements, over wild beasts, and in 
changing their own human form into some animal 
form, and it will be well to give some examples of these 
powers from the folklore of the British Isles. 

(a) In Pembrokeshire there was a person, commonly 
known as " the cunning man of Pentregethen," who 
sold winds to the sailors, and who was reverenced in the 

331. As to the remnants of these races, see Lassen, Indische Alter- 
thumskunde, i, 199, 362. 

* Religion of the Semites, pp. 55, 115, 129, 145, 246. Mr. Wal- 
house, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., v, 413, draws attention to the wide- 
spread and parallel beliefs in demons — beliefs which in India 
until lately, and in ancient Germany and Gaul altogether, were 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 49 

neighborhood in which he dwelt much more than the 
divines ; he could ascertain the state of absent friends, 
and performed all the wonderful actions ascribed to 
conjurers.* At Stromness, in the Orkneys, so late as 
1814 there lived an old beldame who sold favorable 
winds to mariners. She boiled her kettle, muttered her 
incantations, and so raised the wind.f In the Isle of 
Man, Higden says, the women " selle to shipmen wynde, 
as it were closed under three knotes of threde, so that 
the more wynde he wold have, the more knotes he must 
vndo." J At Kempoch Point, in the Firth of Clyde, is a 
columnar rock called the Kempoch Stane, from whence 
a saint w r as wont to dispense favorable winds to those 
who paid for them and unfavorable to those who did 
not put confidence in his powers ; a tradition which 
seems to have been carried on by the Innerkip witches, 
who were tried in 1662, and some portions of which still 
linger among the sailors of Greenock.* These practices 
may be compared with the performances of the priest- 
esses of Sena, who, as described by Pomponius Mela, 

were capable of rousing up the seas and w r inds by incan- 
tations. || 

entirely ignored by inquirers, and he says they " belong to the 
Turanian races, and are antagonistic to the Aryan genius and 
feelings," p. 411. Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 102, 

* Howells's Cambrian Superstitions, 1831, p. 86. 
f Gorrie, Summers and Winters in Orkney, p. 47. 
X Polychronicon by Trevisa, i, cap. 44. 

# Cuthbert Bede, Glencreggan, i, 9, 44 ; cf. Sinclair's Stat. Ace. 
of Scot., viii, 52. 

I Pomponius Mela, iii, 8. It is curious to note that a district 



50 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

(b) The power of witches over animals, and their 
capacity to transform themselves into animal shapes, is 
well known, though, as civilization has gradually eradi- 
cated the wilder sorts of animals, we do not now hear 
of these in connection with witchcraft. The most usual 
transformations are into cats and hares, and less fre- 
quently into red deer, and these have taken the place of 
wolves. Thus, cat transformations are found in York- 
shire ; * hare transformations in Devonshire, Yorkshire, 
Wales, and Scotland ; f deer transformations in Cumber- 
land ; I raven transformations in Scotland ; # cattle 
transformations in Ireland. || Indeed the connection 
between witches and the low r er animals is a very close 
one, and hardly anyw T here in Europe does it occur that 
this connection is relegated to a subordinate place. 
Story after story, custom after custom, is recorded as ap- 
pertaining to witchcraft, and animal transformation 
appears alw r ays. 

From this it may be admitted that the general char- 
acteristics of the superstitions brought about by the 
contact between the Aryan conquerors of India and the 
non -Aryan aborigines are also represented in the cult of 
European witchcraft. When we pass from these gen- 
eral characteristics to some of the details, the identity 

of Douglas in the Isle of Man is known as Sena. — Trans. Manx 
Soc. y v, 65 : Rev. Celt, x, 352. 

* Henderson's Folklore, pp. 206, 207, 209. 

f Henderson, pp. 201, 202, 208; Dalyell, Darker Superstitions 
of Scotland, p. 560; Folklore, ii, 291. 

X Henderson, p. 204. * Dalyell, p. 559. I Ibid,, p. 561. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 51 

of the Indian with the European superstitions is more 
emphatically marked. Thus, in Orissa it is believed that 
witches have the power of leaving their bodies and go- 
ing about invisibly, but if the flower of the pan or betil- 
leaf can be obtained and placed in the right ear, it will 
enable the onlooker to see the witches and talk to them 
with impunity.* This is represented in folklore by the 
magic ointment, which enables people to see otherwise 
invisible fairies, and by the supposed property of the 
fern-seed, which makes people invisible, f Such a par- 
allel as this could only have been produced by going 
back to origins. Again, in the charms resorted to by 
the demon-priests of Ceylon we find a close parallel, 
which belongs to the same category. A small image, 
made of w r ax or w r ood, or a figure drawn upon a leaf or 
something else, supposed to represent the person to be 
injured, is submitted to the sorcerer, together with a 
few hairs from the head of the victim, some clippings 
of his finger-nails, and a thread or two from a cloth 
worn by him. Nails made of a composition of five dif- 
ferent kinds of metals, generally gold, silver, copper, tin, 
and lead are then driven into the image at all those points 
which represent the joints, the heart, the head, and other 
important parts of the body. The name of the intended 
victim being marked on the image, it is buried in the 
ground in some suitable place where the victim is likely 

* Handbook of Folklore, p. 40. 

f Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, p. 59 et seq. ; Brand, i, 315 ; 
cf. Grimm, Teut. Myth., iii, 1210. 



52 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

to pass over it. * This method of destruction by images 
is one of the most generally known among the practices 
of witchcraft in Europe. Plato alludes to it as obtain- 
ing among the Greeks of his period, f Boethius says 
a waxen image was fabricated for the destruction of one 
of the Scottish kings of the tenth century, and if this 
author is not to be taken too seriously for so early a 
period, his narrative is too circumstantial not to be 
readily accepted as a current belief at least of his own 
time. J The later Scottish practices contain all the ele- 
ments of the Ceylon practices. The image was fabri- 
cated of any available materials, it was baptized by the 
name of the victim, or characterized by certain defini- 
tions identifying the resemblance, the various parts were 
pierced with pins or needles, or the whole was wasted 
by heat, and pieces of the victim's hair were associated 
with it. # These close parallels can not be accidental, 
and I am tempted to add that when we come upon other 
parallels which almost suggest the element of accident 
for their production, they may, af fcer all, be due to par- 
allel developments from the same originals. || 

* Journ. As. Soc. Ceylon, 1865-'66, p. 71 ; cf. Ward, Hist, of 
the Hindoos, ii, 100. 

f Plato, Laws, lib. xi. 

% Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 332, 333. 

* Dalyell, op. cit., pp. 334-351. 

|| Such, for instance, as the revenge perpetrated upon the 
young wife in stopping the birth of her first child when her mar- 
riage was resented by a former financee of her husband ; for which 
compare really remarkable parallels in Ceylon As. Soc, 1865-'66, 
p. 70, and Folklore Record, ii, 116-117. It is important to note 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 53 

It seems to me to be as impossible to ignore the evi- 
dence produced by these close parallels as to accept 
it at less than its full value. If the denionism of India 
is non-Aryan in origin and produced by the contact 
between Aryans and aborigines, the witchcraft of Europe 
must be equally non- Aryan in origin, and produced by 
the contact between Aryans and aborigines, even al- 
though during the ages of civilization the people who 
have carried on the cult have not kept up their race dis- 
tinction side by side with their race superstition.* 

Fortunately there is one singular fact preserved 
among the ceremonies of witchcraft in Scotland, which 
helps us to carry this argument a step forward toward 
absolute proof. In order to injure the waxen image of 
the intended victim, the implements used in some cases 
by the witches were stone arrowheads, or elf-shots, as 
they were called, f and their use was accompanied by an 
incantation. J Here we have, in the undoubted form of 
a prehistoric implement, the oldest untouched detail of 
early life which has been preserved by witchcraft, and 
it is such untouched oldest fragments, not their modern 
substitutions or additions, which must be accentuated 

that Grimm rejects the idea of plagiarism to account for the simi- 
larity in witch-doings. — Teut. Myth., iii, 1044. 

* This observation even may have to be modified by further re- 
search, for in the Anglo-Saxon laws witchcraft is generally men- 
tioned as a crime peculiar to serfs. 

t Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, i, 192 ; Dal yell. Darker Supersti- 
tions of Scotland, pp. 352, 353 ; cf. Nilsson's Primitive Inhabitants 
of Scandinavia, p. 199. 

X Dalyell, op. cit. y p. 357. 



54: ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

by the student of folklore ; they clearly must be the 
starting-point of any explanation which may be sought 
for of the usages and superstitions of which they form 
a part. Grimm has stripped witchcraft of the accretions 
due to the action of the Church against heretics, and 
perceives " in the whole witch business a clear connec- 
tion with the sacrifices and spirit world of the ancient 
Germans," * and it seems that this definition must be 
enlarged to include all branches of the Aryan race. 

It is interesting to turn from these stone implements 
used in witchcraft to the beliefs about them in peasant 
thought. Irish peasants wear flint arrowheads about 
their necks set in silver as an amulet against elf-shoot- 
ing, f In the west of Ireland, but especially in the 
Arran Isles, Galway Bay, they are looked on with great 
superstition. They are supposed to be fairy darts or 
arrows, which have been thrown by fairies, either in 
fights among themselves or at a mortal man or beast. 
The finder of one should carefully put it in a hole in a 
wall or ditch. It should not be brought into a house or 
given to any one ; but the islanders of Arran are very 
fond of making votive offerings of them at the holy 
wells on the main-land. They carry them to the differ- 
ent patrons and leave them there, but they do not seem 
to leave them at the holy wells on the island. J 

* Teut, Myth., in, 1045. 

f Henderson, Folklore of Northern Countries, p. 185. 
% Folklore Record, iv, 112; c/. Vallancey, Collectanea, xiii; 
Nenia Britannica, p. 154. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 55 

If a quotation from the Brontes' eminently local 
novels is to be admitted as evidence, the belief that 
stone arrowheads were elf-shots was prevalent in York- 
shire.* 

In Scotland, Edward Lhwyd noted in 1713 that 
" the most curious as well as the vulgar throughout this 
country are satisfied they often drop out of the air, be- 
ing shot by fairies," and that " they have not been used 
as amulets above thirty or forty years." f At Lauder 
and in Banffshire the peasantry called them elf -arrow- 
heads. J At Wick, in Caithness, the peasantry asserted 
that they were fairies' arrows, and that the fairies shot 
them at cattle, which instantly fell down dead, though 
the hide of the animal remained quite entire.* That 
this was a Lowland Scotch belief is also attested by 
Keightley's collection of facts. || 

Thus, then, in witchcraft and in peasant thought 
there is a common belief as to prehistoric arrowheads 
having belonged to beings known as elves. It proves, 
as Nilsson observes, that it was not the Celts themselves, 
but a people considered by them to be versed in magic, 
who fabricated and used these stone arrows. A These 
people, whoever they may prove to be, were therefore 
powerful enough to introduce mythic conceptions con- 

* Folklore Journal, i, 300. 

f Folklore Record, iv, 169; cf. Gregors Folklore of Northeast 
of Scotland, p. 59. 

I Sinclair's Stat. Ace. Scot, i, 73 ; iii, 56, 

* Ibid., x, 15 ; xxi, 148. || Fairy Mythology, pp. 351, 352. 
A Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, p. 200. 

5 



56 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

cerning themselves into the minds of their conquerors, 
and some authorities of eminence have not hesitated to 
urge that they have even left traditions of their exist- 
ence in a more historical shape.* " Who," asks Mr. 
Campbell, " were these powers of evil who can not resist 
iron— these fairies who shoot stone arrows, and are of 
the foes to the human race ? Is all this but a dim, hazy 
recollection of war between a people who had iron 
weapons and a race who had not— a race whose remains 
are found all over Europe ? " f 

We are here met by two opposing theories— one 
whose upholders look back upon the fairy traditions as 
evidence of so much actual history, the other as evi- 
dence only of the spirit beliefs of past ages. 

But if the close inter-relationship between fairy-be- 
liefs and witch-beliefs be steadily kept in mind, these 
opposing theories may, I think, be brought into some- 
thing like unison. Mr. Hartland has proved this close 
inter-relationship by a lengthy investigation, J and it 

* Skene, in the first volume of his Celtic Scotland, and Elton, 
in his Origins of English History \ cap. vii, are the most available 
authorities on this subject. 

f Tales of the West Highlands, p. lxxvi ; Nilsson, in Primitive 
Inhabitants of Scandinavia (p. 247 et seq.), and MacRitchie, in his 
Testimony of Tradition, have followed this line of argument. 

X Science of Fairy Tales, passim. Grimm's observation that 
the witches' devils have proper names so strikingly similar in 
formation to those of elves and kobolds that one can scarcely 
think otherwise than that nearly all devils' names of that class are 
descended from other folk-names for those sprites — Teut. Myth., 
iii, 1063— strikingly confirms the explanation I have ventured 
upon as to the connection between witchcraft and fairycraft. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUExXCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 57 

must henceforth be the basis of research into these de- 
partments of folklore. 

We commence the task of certifying to the unison 
of these two theories with the fact of the personal ele- 
ment in witchcraft — the attribution of magical powers, 
derived from the spirit of evil, to certain definite classes 
of people, the acceptance of this attribution by the peo- 
ple concerned, and their claim to have become acquainted 
with their supposed powers by initiation. I am inclined 
to lay great stress upon the act of initiation. It empha- 
sizes the idea of a caste distinct from the general pop- 
ulace, and it postulates the existence of this caste anterior 
to the time when those who practice their supposed 
powers first come into notice. Carrying back this act 
of initiation age after age, as the dismal records of 
witchcraft enable us to do for some centuries, it is clear 
that the people from time to time thus introduced into 
the witch caste carried on the practices and assumed the 
functions of the caste even though they came to it as 
novices and strangers. We thus arrive at an artificial 
means of descent of a particular group of superstitions, 
and it might be termed initiatory descent. 

But descent by initiation was not invented without 
some good and sufficient cause, and this cause will be 
found, I think, in the failure of blood-descent. In the 
primitive Aryan family failure of blood-descent led to 
the legal fiction of adoption, and the history of caste al- 
most everywhere shows the same phenomenon. I do 
not wish to ask too much from this argument before it 



58 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

is substantiated by evidence, but that we may take it as 
a sound working hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that 
it supplies the missing link in a most important series 
of developments clearly marked in the history of Avitch- 
craft and its connection with fairycraft. 

The only people occupying the lands of modern 
European civilization who have not succeeded in mark- 
ing their descendants with the stamp of their race 
origin are the non-Aryans. Celt, Teuton, Scandinavian, 
and Slav are still to be found in centers definable on 
the map of Europe, but except in the Basque Pyrenees 
the forerunners of the Aryan peoples have become ab- 
sorbed by their conquerors. Blood-descent was of no 
avail to them for the keeping alive of their old faiths 
and beliefs. That they resorted to initiation as a remedy 
is the suggestion I w T ish to make, and that in witchcraft 
there has been preserved some of the non-Aryan faiths 
and beliefs is the conclusion I wish to draw — a conclu- 
sion which is met more than half-way by the close 
parallel which, as we have already partly seen, exists be- 
tween the beliefs and practices of witches and non- 
Aryan beliefs. 

I think it is more than probable that the ancient 
cult of Druidism will prove to be a factor in the race 
history of witchcraft. At the time when all traces of 
Druidism, as such, had completely died out in Britain, 
some of the practices attributed to witches were exact 
reproductions of the practices attributed to Druids by 
the earlier writers. One of the most significant, as it is 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 59 

one of the most painful, of these practices has for its 
basis the belief that the life of one man could only be 
redeemed by that of another. The evidence for the 
Druidical side of this parallel is given by Csesar and 
other authorities. The evidence for it in witchcraft is 
given in some of the seventeenth-century trials, where 
all the details of the horrid rites are related with mi- 
nute accuracy.* I shall have occasion to refer to these 
details at some length later on, but I note here that 
they supply us not only with evidence of the continuity 
in witchcraft of a particular Druidic belief, but also of 
the continuity of the methods of adapting this belief 
to practice — namely, through the interposition of a 
trained adept, in fact the priestess of a cult ; for in 
this instance, at all events, the Scottish witch is the 
successor of the Druid priestess. She is so in other 
characteristics already noted — in her capacity for trans- 
formation into animal form, in her power over winds 
and waves, both being common to witch and Druidess 
alike. 

It is no answer to the argument that Druidism was 
continued by witchcraft to point to the apparent chrono- 
logical gap between the decline of one and the earliest 
historical mention of the other. f That Druidism eon- 

* Cf. Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland, i, 88 ; Dalyell, 
Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 176. 

t Grimm says that the earlier middle ages had known of 
magicians and witches only in the milder senses, as legendary elv- 
ish beings peopling the domain of vulgar belief, or even as demo- 
niacs.— Teut Myth., iii, 1067. 



CO ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

tinued to exist long after it was officially dead, can be 
proved. The character of much of the paganism of 
the early Scots and Picts has been accepted as Druidic 
by Mr. Skene. The histories of the labors of St. Pat- 
rick and St. Columba abound in references to the 
Druids. " The Druids of Laogaire," says an ancient 
poem, "concealed not from him the coming of Pat- 
rick."* Columba competes with the Druids in his 
supernatural powers on behalf of Christianity.! Druid- 
ism thus came into contact with Christianity. Mr. 
Skene and Mr. O'Curry, however, are inclined to think 
that at this time it was not the Druidism of Caesar 
and Pliny — " it was," says the former writer, " a sort of 
f etichism, which peopled all the objects of nature with 
malignant beings to whose agency its phenomena were 
attributed." J Mr. O'Curry gives some of the vast num- 
ber of allusions to the Druids in Irish MSS., which 
contain instances of contests in Druidical spells, of 
clouds raised by incantations of Druidesses, of the in- 
terpretation of dreams, of the raising of tempests, of 
the use of a yew wand instead of oak or mistletoe, of 
auguries drawn from birds, and other peculiar rites and 
beliefs ; but he distinctly repudiates the idea that Irish 
Druidism, as made known by the MSS., was like the 
classical Druidism in its adoption of human sacrifice, 

* Stokes's Gaedelica, p. 131. 

\ Skene. Celtic Scotland, ii, 115-117, gives the principal evi- 
dence under this head. Cf. Elton, Origins of English History, pp. 
273-274. 

\ Skene, Celtic Scotland, ii, 118, 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 61 

or in its priests being servants of any special positive 
worship.* 

It is difficult to contest opinions like these, but they 
do not appear to be borne out by the facts. For in- 
stance, on the question of human sacrifice the Book of 
Ballymote tells us how one of the kings brought fifty 
hostages from Munster, and, dying before he reached his 
palace, the hostages were buried alive around the grave, f 
The evidence of Scottish witchcraft, already quoted, is 
clear as to the sacrifice of one human being for an- 
other in case of sickness ; and Mr. Elton says that the 
Welsh and Irish traditions contain many traces of the 
custom of human sacrifice. " Some of the penalties of 
the ancient laws," he says, " seemed to have originated 
in an age when the criminal was offered to the gods ; 
the thief and the seducer of women were burned on a 
pile of logs or cast into a fiery furnace ; the maiden 
who forgot her duty was burned, or drowned, or sent 
adrift to sea." J To these examples must be added the 
well-known story of Vortigern, who, on the recommenda- 
tion of the British Druids, sought for a victim to sacri- 



* O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Irish, ii, 222-228. 

f O'Curry, p. cccxx ; cf. Elton, Origins of English History, 
p. 272. 

X Origins of English History, p. 271. Rhys, Celtic Heathen- 
dom, p. 224, says : " Irish Druidism absorbed a certain amount of 
Christianity, and it would be a problem of considerable difficulty 
to fix on the point where it ceased to be Druidism, and from which 
onward it could be said to be Christianity in any restricted sense 
of that term." 



62 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

fice at the foundation of his castle ; * the parallel sacri- 
fice of St. Oran in Iona by Columba ; f and the sacrifice 
of the first-born of children and flocks, in order to 
secure power and peace in all their tribes and to obtain 
milk and corn for the support of their families. J 

These facts are perhaps sufficient to show that the 
evidence for the continuity of Druidism, whatever 
Druidism may have been, meets the other evidence as 
to the presence in witchcraft of Druid beliefs and prac- 
tices sufficiently nearly in point of time for it to be a 
reasonable argument to affirm that witchcraft is the 
lineal successor of Druidism. The one point necessary, 
then, to complete the argument I have advanced is, that 
Druidism must be identified as a non-Aryan cult. I 
am aw r are that this point still awaits much investigation 
by Celtic philologists and historians, but in the mean 
time I am content to claim that considerable weight 
must be given to Professor Ehys's twice-repeated affir- 
mation that his researches go to prove Druidism to be of 
non- Aryan origin,* especially as his researches lie in 
quite a different direction to my own. 

* Irish Nennius, cap. 40. O'Curry mentions this as evidence 
for the differentiation of Irish and British Druidism. — Manners 
and Customs, ii, 222. 

f Stokes's Three Middle Irish Homilies, p. 119 ; Rev. Celt., ii, 
200 ; Stat. Ace. of Scotland, vii, 321 ; Pennant's Tour, ii. 298. 
X Booh of Leinster, quoted by Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 201. 

# Rhys, Celtic Britain, pp. 67-75 ; Lectures on Welsh Philology, 
p. 32 ; compare Celtic Heathendom, p. 216 et seq. ; I have dealt 
with the institutional side of Druidism in its non- Aryan origin in 
my Village Community, p. 104 et seq. 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 63 

Whether, therefore, we rest our argument upon the 
parallels to be found between witch practices and beliefs 
and non- Aryan practices and beliefs, or upon the hy- 
pothesis that the initiation necessary to the performance 
of witchcraft is in reality the method of continuing 
Druidic beliefs and practices when the possibilities of 
continuing them by race descent had died out, there is 
proof enough that in witchcraft is contained the survival 
of non- Aryan practices and beliefs — practices and be- 
liefs, that is, which the non- Aryan peoples possessed con- 
cerning themselves and their own powers. 

We next have to meet the question as to the race 
origin of fairy beliefs, in so far as they are parallel to 
witch beliefs. If witchcraft represents ancient aborigi- 
nal belief in direct descent by the channels just ex- 
amined, what part of the same aboriginal belief does 
fairycraft represent, and how is its separation from 
witchcraft to be accounted for ? 

The theory that fairies are the traditional represent- 
atives of an ancient pygmy race has met with consider- 
able support from f olklorists. It is needless to repeat 
all the arguments in support of this theory which have 
been advanced during the past twenty years, because 
they are contained in works easily accessible and well 
known. But it is important to note that these beliefs 
must have originated not with the aboriginal pygmy race 
themselves, but with the conquering race who over- 
powered them and drove them to the hills and out-parts 
of the land. The influence of the despised, out-driven 



G4 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

aborigines did not cease after the conflict was over. It 
produced upon the minds of their conquerors mythic 
conceptions, which have during the lapse of time be- 
come stereotyped into certain well-defined lines of fairy 
lore. 

At this point we may discuss how the parallel be- 
tween witchcraft and fairycraft is explained by the 
ethnological characteristics which have been advanced. 
Witchcraft has been explained as the survival of ab- 
original beliefs from aboriginal sources. Fairycraft has 
been explained as the survival of beliefs about the ab- 
origines from Aryan sources. The aborigines, as is 
proved from Indian and other evidence, not only be- 
lieved in their own demoniacal powers, but sought in 
every way to spread this belief among their conquerors. 
Thus, then, the belief of the aborigines about themselves, 
and of the conquering race about the aborigines, would 
be on all material points identical ; and by interpreting 
the essentials of witchcraft and of fairycraft as the sur- 
vivals in folklore of the mythic influence of a con- 
quered race upon their conquerors, we are supported by 
the facts which meet us everywhere in folklore, and by 
an explanation which alone is adequate to account for all 
the phenomena. It has been held, indeed, by Grimm 
and others, that witchcraft is a direct offshoot from 
fairy beliefs, consequent upon the action of the Christian 
Church in stamping fairydom with a connection with 
the devil. But if this argument is worth anything, it 
would account for the fact that fairydom, after throwing 



THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 65 



off such a powerful offshoot as witchcraft, should have 
itself continued in undiminished force with all the old 
beliefs attached to it. But it does not account for this 
difficulty. On the other hand, the explanation I have 
attempted is not involved with such a difficulty. The 
various phenomena fit into their places with remarkable 
precision ; there is no twisting of any of the details, and 
not only analogies but differences are accounted for. 

I am tempted to put this argument into genea- 
logical form, to show more clearly the lines along 
which we have traveled It would be set forth as 

follows : 

Aboriginal beliefs. 

i 



Beliefs by 

aborigines as to 

their own demoniacal 

powers, 

Druidism. 



Aryan beliefs 
about the demoniacal 
powers of aborigines. 



Blood descent of 
aborigines ceases. 



Initiatory descent 

takes the place of 

blood descent. 

I 
Witchcraft. 



= Fairycraft. 
Survival of aboriginal beliefs. 

I do not suggest that this table should be hardened 
into an absolute rule. All that it is intended for, and 
all that folklore can attempt at present, is to indicate 
some of the results which may be attained by a close 
and systematic study of its details. These details in 
some departments will allow of something like precision 



66 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

ill their arrangement; in others we must still grope 
about for some time to come yet. But if we attempt 
precision in arrangement, we must be careful not to 
allow it to become the means of detaching any items 
of folklore from their proper place amid all the other 
items. Their relationship to each other is, indeed, the 
only means by which we may trace out their origins. 
The neglect of this principle in connection with the 
numerous accounts of the higher divinities both of 
classical and modern times, has helped to bring about 
the idea that in Europe both higher and lower divinities 
belong to the same people. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 

It would seem that we may distinguish in the pre- 
historic ages of man certain data which point to a pre- 
tribal society. The argument as it stands at present is 
not one to insist upon with too much precision, either 
with reference to its illustration of earliest man, or with 
reference to its influence on later man. Rather, it must 
be continually borne in mind that the evolution of so- 
ciety does in some measure point back to an early phase 
of extreme localization, and that biological evidence 
strongly supports such a view. So far as the survey of 
primitive belief has proceeded with reference to the 
origin of certain of its classes, there seems to be some 
proof of the same course of evolution. Thus Dormer 
says : " If monotheism had been an original doctrine, 
traces of such a belief would have remained among all 
peoples ; if the cure of disease by medication had been 
the original method, such a useful art would never have 
been so utterly lost that sorcery should wholly usurp its 
place; in savage animism we find no survivals which 
show inconsistencies with it." * But savage animism is 

* Dormer, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, pp. 386, 387. 



68 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

founded upon, and essentially bound up with, locality. 
One word only is required in proof of this, and for this 
purpose we naturally turn to Dr. Tylor. Studying his 
careful analysis of animism, and the evidence brought 
forward to support it, it appears clear enough that the 
emphasis of animism lies in its localization — " the local 
spirits which belong to mountain and rock and valley, 
to well and stream and lake — in brief, to those natural 
objects which in early ages aroused the savage mind to 
mythological ideas." * 

I take it to be a distinct advance in culture when 
mankind began to separate himself from local worship. 
In the study of Semitic religions which Professor 
Robertson Smith has given us, he has touched upon 
this point in a chapter which contains many valuable 
suggestions, but he does not appear to me to mark suffi- 
cient distinction between the tribal gods which are, ac- 
cording to his evidence, tending to become local, and 
the primitive local gods of the land which had never be- 
come tribal. f The distinction is an important one, and 
has a definite bearing upon the ethnology of Semitic 
ritual. It must, however, be approached from the savage 
side. ISTo one has paid closer attention to this than 
Major Ellis in his studies of African beliefs, and it 
seems clear from these that the transition is from local 
to tribal, and not vice versa, " The deified powers in 
nature," says Major Ellis, " the rivers and lagoons, being 

* Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 187. 
f Religion of the Semites, cap. iii. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 69 

necessarily local, would in course of time, from at first 
being merely regarded as the gods of the district, come 
to be regarded as the gods of the people living in the 
district ; in this way would probably arise the idea of 
national or tribal gods; so that eventually the gods, 
instead of being regarded as being interested in the 
whole of mankind, would come to be regarded as be- 
ing interested in separate tribes or nations alone."* 
AVith some slight amendments, this passage fairly inter- 
prets the evidence from all parts of the savage world, 
and I have been gradually forced to the conviction that 
the greatest triumph of the Aryan race was its emanci- 
pation from the principle of local worship, and the rise 
of the conception of gods who could and did accompany 
the tribes wheresoever they traveled. No doubt tribal 
gods incline to become local once more — to have a fixed 
habitat, a sanctuary, a home made holy by the presence 
of the god. This is particularly the case with the 
Semitic gods, and its close approximation to the form 
of belief in purely local deities has prevented Professor 
Eobertson Smith from entering upon a most interesting 
phase of Semitic ritual. But the gods of the Aryans 
have never been quite so local in their nature, even after 
long residence with their worshipers in much-loved 
homes. All the local haunts of the Greek gods do not 
make Greek gods local — they are still tribal gods, with 
a special local home for the time being. 

It is not, perhaps, worth while pursuing this subject 

* Ellis, Tshi- speaking Peoples, p. 114. 



70 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

further on the general evidence. It would occupy much 
space for the point to be proved in detail, but there is 
already sufficient illustration of it in the text-books of 
anthropology to allow me to pass on to the special evi- 
dence I am in search of. Thus we find that Professor 
Rhys draws a line of distinction between the greater 
divinities of the Celtic pantheon, who lent themselves to 
localization, and the crowd of minor divinities who were 
never anything else than genii locorum. Among the 
latter he includes "the spirits of particular forests, 
mountain tops, rocks, lakes, rivers, river sources, and all 
springs of water which have in later times been treated 
as holy wells."* To these must be added all those 
agricultural deities, the ritual of whom has been exam- 
ined so thoroughly by Mr. Frazer. Earth deities, claim- 
ing their sacrifice of human blood ; tree deities, claim- 
ing the life of their priest ; corn deities, whose death 
forms part of their own cult ; rain deities, claiming vic- 
tims for their service, form no part of any recognizable 
tribal cult, but are essentially the fixed heritage of the 
places where they originated and fructified. 

This classification of the local deities leads up to an 
important point in the ethnology of folklore. Turning 
back to Professor Ehys's group, we find him saying of 
them that " it has been supposed, and not without rea- 
son, that these landscape divinities reacted powerfully 
on the popular imagination in which they had their ex- 
istence by imparting to the physical surroundings of the 



* Celtic Heathendom, p. 105. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 71 

Celt the charm of a weird and unformulated poetry. 
But what race was it that gave the Celtic landscape of 
antiquity its population of spirits ? The Celtic invaders 
of Aryan stock brought their gods with them to the 
lands they conquered ; but as to the innumerable divin- 
ities attached, so to say, to the soil, the great majority 
of them were very possibly the creations of the people 
here before the Celts." * I would interpret in the same 
way the agricultural deities which are not included in 
Professor Rhys's dictum. Without some such inter- 
pretation it is difficult to account for the savagery of 
the ritual practiced in their worship, or for its extensive 
and thoroughly settled forms. Reckoning from the 
Aryan occupation of eastern and northern Europe, there 
is no time for such a cult to have developed from the 
primitive pastoral worship of the Aryans, even if it is 
possible to assume, as it would be necessary to do, that 
pastoral life is an antecedent to agricultural life. 
Against such an assumption, though it has been urged 
by some distinguished scholars, I would enter the 
strongest protest. There is no proof of it in anthro- 
pological evidence. There is proof of pastoral tribes 
settling down, as the Aryans have done, as the over- 
lords of aboriginal agriculturists; of the gradual ex- 
tinction of pastoral life in the development of settled 
tribal life ; of the final extinction of tribal life altogether 
in the rise of the village community. But all this is 
distinctly antagonistic to the idea that pastoral life is 

* Rhys, loc, cit. 



72 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

older and more primitive than agricultural. Connected 
with agricultural life we get the rudest tribes of savages, 
the rudest forms of culture. As Mr. Keary has said : 
" If the remains of fetichism could be so vital, fetichism 
itself must have had a lengthened sway ; but the people 
could never have become the Aryan nation had their 
notions of unity been confined to the local fetich and 
the village commune."* Let us once clearly under- 
stand that the local fetichism to be found in Aryan 
countries simply represents the undying faiths of the 
older race, which the Aryans at last incorporated into 
their own higher beliefs, and the difficulties lying in the 
way of accounting for Aryan progress, which have been 
recognized but not met, seem to vanish. 

The localization of primitive belief, then, is, as it 
seems to me, an important factor in the consideration of 
survivals. Given the natural object which originated, 
in the rude mind of early man, a set of beliefs, and the 
continued existence of the natural object would greatly 
assist the continued existence of the beliefs. River 
worship is a case in point. It is found almost every- 
where among people of a rude or savage culture, and 
its origin is not far to seek. Thus among some African 
tribes "there are many deities bearing the name of 
Prah, all of whom are spirits of the river Prah, called 
by the natives Bohsiim-Prah. At each town or con- 
siderable village upon its banks sacrifice is held on a 
day about the middle of October to Prah ; and from the 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 1 10. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 73 

fact of the one day being common to all the peoples 
dwelling on the river, and that the sacrificial ceremonies 
are the same throughout, it seems evident that originally 
this worship was established for one great deity of the 
river, although now the inhabitants of each village 
believe in the separate spirit of the Prah, who resides 
in some part of the river near their hamlet. Everywhere 
along the river the priests of these gods officiate in 
groups of three, two male and one female, an arrange- 
ment which is peculiar to Prah. . . . The usual sacrifice 
was two human adults, one male and one female. . . . 
Crocodiles are sacred to Prah."* 

This is not far removed from the Esthonian belief. 
In Esthonia there is a particular stream which has long 
been the object of reverence — the Wohhanda. In the 
olden time no Esthonian would fell any tree that grew 
on its banks or break one of the reeds that fringed its 
watercourse. If he did he would die within the year. 
The brook, along with the spring that gave it birth, was 
purified periodically, and it was believed that if dirt was 
thrown into either, bad weather would be the result. 
Tradition speaks of offerings — sometimes of little chil- 
dren — having been made to Wohhanda ; the river god 
being a little man in blue and yellow stockings, some- 
times visible to mortal eye, resident in the stream and 
in the habit of occasionally rising out of it.f 

People with beliefs like these do not readily give 

* Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 64 ; cf. pp. 32, 33. 
f Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, i, 418. 



74; ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

them up, because the power of the river to work harm 
does not die out as race succeeds race among the in- 
habitants of river districts. When in the Solomon 
Islands a man accidentally falls into the river and a 
shark attacks him, he is not allowed to escape. If he 
succeeds in eluding the shark, his fellow-tribesmen will 
throw him back to his doom, believing him to be 
marked out for sacrifice to the god of the river.* But 
this explanation exactly fits the superstition against res- 
cuing a drowning person which is made so familiar to 
us by Scott's story The Pirate. \ The form of the 
peasant belief may be thus given : " Among the seamen 
of Orkney and Shetland it was deemed unlucky to 
rescue persons from drowning, since it was held as a 
matter of religious faith that the sea is entitled to cer- 
tain victims, and if deprived would avenge itself on 
those who interfere." J 

I will now turn to some examples of river worship in 
Great Britain. The existence of water spirits is a well- 
known belief,* but I am desirous of noting rather the 
deities of special rivers. It is curious that in Scotland 
persons who bore the name of the river Tweed were sup- 
posed to have as an ancestor the genie of the river of 
that name. || The river Auld Gramdt, or Ugly Burn, in 
the county of Eoss, springing from Loch Glaish, was 

* Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 179. 

f Folklore Journal, vii, 44; ibid., iii, 185. 
% Tudor's Orkney and Shetland, p. 176. 

* Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 543. 
[ Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii, 336. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. f5 

regarded with awe as the abode of the water-horse and 
other spiritual beings.* The river Spey is spoken of as 
" she," and it is a common belief that at least one victim 
is necessary every year.f 

One of the principal English river divinities has been 
figured on a Eoman pavement. This pavement is the 
well-known one at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, on the 
western bank of the Severn, in the territory of the ancient 
Silures. Three inscriptions are preserved, as follows : 

(1) DEYO NODENTI. 

(2) D. M. KODOKTI. 

(3) DEO NUDEETE M. 

and Professor Ehys has discussed their philological im- 
portance. | 

The remains of the temple at Lydney, for such it is 
generally considered, connects this god with the sea, or 
rather with the worship of water, and in this case with 
the river Severn in the following particulars. The mo- 
saic floor displays representations of sea-serpents or the 
/o?Tea accompanying Glaucus in the Greek mythology, 
and fishes supposed to stand for the salmon of the Sev- 
ern ; an ugly band of red surrounds the mouth of a 
funnel leading into the ground beneath, which hole is 
supposed to have been used for libations to the god. A 
small plaque of bronze found on the spot gives us prob- 
ably a representation of the god himself. The principal 

* Dalyell, op. cit, p. 544. t Folklore, iii, 72. 

X Celtic Heathendom, p. 126. 



76 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

figure is a youthful deity crowned with rays like Phoebus 
and standing in a chariot drawn by four horses. On 
either side the winds are typified by a winged genius 
floating along, and the rest of the space is left to two 
tritons, while a detached piece, probably of the same 
bronze, represents another triton and a fisherman who 
has just succeeded in hooking a salmon.* 

Of course this work is Roman, and must therefore 
bear the stamp of the Roman interpretation of the local 
god. It would be conventionalized to the Roman stand- 
ard of the water god, Neptune. I do not at all consider 
that we have here the British embodiment of the god, 
but simply the Roman interpretation of the British be- 
lief — the description of the British cult in monumental 
records instead of in literary records. 

We pass, however, from archaeology to folklore. 
Professor Rhys identifies the epigraphical form of the 
Severn god's name, Nodens, with the Welsh Lludd and 
with the Irish Nuada. The first name brings us to the 
legendary King Lud, who is said to have built London, 
and whose name preserved in our Ludgate Hill is suffi- 
cient to attest the veracity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 
record that one of the Welsh names for London was 
Caer Ludd, or Lud's Fort. " The probability," says 
Professor Rhys, " that as a temple on a hill near the 
Severn associated him with that river in the west, so a 

* I take this summary from Professor Rhys, loc, cit. ; the whole 
find has been described in a separate volume, and profusely illus- 
trated by the Rev. W. H. Bathurst and C. \V. King. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 77 

still more ambitious temple on a hill connected him with 
the Thames in the east " — a probability which is con- 
firmed by the tradition, so often quoted, that St. Paul's 
Cathedral has taken the place of a heathen temple. 

The second name, the Irish Nuada, takes us to the 
Boyne, which was known as Eigh Mna Nuadhat — that 
is, the wrist or forearm of Nuadhat's wife.* The iden- 
tification of Nuada as a river god is clearly shown by the 
legend connected with the well of the Blessed Trinity at 
which the Boyne rises. One of the miraculous virtues 
of this well was that any one who approached it except 
the monarch and his three cup-bearers was instantly de- 
prived of sight. Boan, the queen of Nuada, determined 
to test the mystical powers, and not only approached the 
well and defied its powers, but passed three times round 
it to the left, as was customary in incantations. Upon 
completion of the third round the waters rose, mutilated 
the daring queen, and as she fled to the sea, followed her 
until she reached the present mouth of the river, f 

The river Dee, near Chester, was supposed to pos- 
sess characteristics in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis 
which marks its godlike attributes. " The inhabitants 

* O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Irish, iii, 156. 

f Wilde's Beauties of the Boyne, p. 24, from the Book of 
Lecan and the Booh of Ballymote. Near the bridge at Stack- 
allan a patron used to be held, and it was customary for the peo- 
ple to swim their cattle across the river at this spot as a charm 
against fairies and certain diseases. — Wilde, loc. cit., p. 171. A 
similar legend is told of the Shannon. — O'Curry, Manners and 
Customs, ii, 143, 144 ; cf. Rev. Celtique, vi, 244. 



78 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

of those parts assert that the waters of this river change 
their fords every month, and as it inclines more toward 
England or Wales they can with certainty prognosticate 
which nation will be successful or unfortunate during 
the year." * Professor Ehys draws attention to the name 
of another river — the Belisama — which marks it out as 
one that was formerly considered divine, the name oc- 
curring in inscriptions found in Gaul as that of the god- 
dess equated with the Minerva of Italy, f If this river 
is to be identified with the Eibble, as Professor Ehys 
suggests, folklore has preserved something of the old 
cult. This river has a spirit called Peg o' Nell, and a 
spring in the grounds of Waddow bears her name and 
is graced by a stone image, now headless, which is said 
to represent her. A tradition connects this Peg o' Nell 
with an ill-used servant at Waddow Hall, who, in re- 
venge for her mistress's successful malediction in caus- 
ing her death, was inexorable in demanding every seven 
years a life to be quenched in the waters of the Eibble. 
" Peg's night " was the closing night of the septenniate, 
and when it came round, unless a bird, a cat, or a dog 
was drowned in the stream, some human being was cer- 
tain to fall a victim there. J The river Tees has also a 
sprite, which is called Peg Powler, a sort of Lorelei, says 

* Giraldus, Itinerary through Wales, ii, cap. xi; cf. Rev. Cel- 
tique, ii, 2-5, for the distribution of " Dee " as a river name and 
its mythological meaning. 

f Celtic Britain, 2d edit., p. 68. 

% Henderson, Folklore of Northern Counties, p. 2G5 ; Harland 
and Wilkinson's Lancashire Folklore, p. 89. 



TIIE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 79 

Henderson, with green tresses and an insatiable desire 
for human life. The foam or froth which is often seen 
floating on the higher portion of the Tees in large 
masses is called " Peg Powler's suds," and the finer, 
less sponge-like froth is called " Peg Powler's cream."* 
Childien w T ere still warned in Mr. Denham's days from 
playing on the banks of the river by threats that Peg 
Powler would drag them into the water, f The Yore, 
near Middleham, is said to be much infested with a hor- 
rid kelpie or water-horse, who rises from the stream at 
evening and ramps along the meadows searching for 
prey, and it is imagined that the kelpie claims at least 
one human victim annually. J 

These and the hill deities are essentially inimical to 
man, but the local deities resident in wells are friendly. 
Professor Eobertson Smith has drawn from the Semitic 
facts sufficient general evidence of the rise of well or 
spring worship,* identifying it with the agricultural life 
of aborigines who had not yet developed the idea of a 
heavenly god. It will be for us to examine the evidence 
in a European country, and sufficient examples are to be 
found in the British Isles for the purpose. 

It is not true of many forms of popular superstition, 
though it is frequently stated to be true, that they pre- 
vail universally through the country. But in the case 
of well worship it may be asserted with some confidence 

* Henderson, p. 265. f Denham Tracts. 

X Longstaffe, Bichmondshire, p. 96 ; Barker's Wensleydale, 
p. 286. * Religion of the Semites, cap. iii ; cf. p. 99. 



80 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

that it prevails in every country of the three kingdoms, 
and this fact necessitates a very careful inquiry as to its 
origin. A purely local cult, like that connected with 
river worship, can be accounted for by appealing to its 
special character as a belief that crops up only here and 
there in isolation. The case is altogether different when 
dealing with a general cult everywhere prevalent. It 
might have originated with the incoming of any of the 
dominating forces of culture— with Christianity, with 
the Aryan conquest by Teuton and Celt. In fact, what 
we have first to reckon with in examining into its origin 
is its general prevalence. The question forms itself in 
the following way : Did such a worship originate from 
above and spread downward among the people until it 
became universal, or did it begin from the people and 
penetrate upward ? Of course the question put in these 
terms does not indicate how important it is to endeavor 
to obtain an answer to it. But this is the first step, and 
we may presently translate it into more definite terms. 

Of the antiquity of the custom we are assured by 
the well-known prohibitions of it by the Saxon clergy 
and by Canute, and this also certifies to its general 
prevalence, while its incorporation into the Roman 
Catholic ritual of Ireland * indicates that its influence 

* No religious place in Ireland could be without a holy well. 
Otway, Sketches in Erris, p. 213 ; cf. Proc. Roy. Hist, and Arch. 
Soc. Ireland, 4th Ser., ii, 268, where the evidence on the subject is 
summarized very well. St. Columbkille is said to have " sained 
three hundred well-springs that were swift." — Whitley Stokes, 
Three Middle Irish Homilies. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 81 

has the capacity, at all events, to penetrate upward. A 
worship that was formally and officially prohibited in 
the tenth and eleventh centuries and has been formally 
accepted in modern times could not, under any circum- 
stances, have been brought over by, and become preva- 
lent through the medium of, the Christian Church. 

Any further consideration of its origin from Chris- 
tian influences seems to me quite unnecessary, though 
there are other arguments which might be put. We 
come, then, to the influence of Aryan culture, which, 
spreading itself, as its speech indicates, all over the 
land, is a vera causa for such a general cult as well 
worship. But the evidence, when treated geographically, 
reveals a state of things which in the end will compel 
us to conclude that Aryan culture received, rather than 
generated, well worship in Britain. 

Commencing with the Teutonic centers of England, 
the middle and southeastern counties almost fix the 
boundary of one form of well worship — a form which 
has lost all local color, all distinct ritual, and remains 
only in the dedication of the well or spring to a saint of 
the Christian Church, in the tradition of its name as a 
" holy well," or else in the memory of some sort of rev- 
erence formerly paid to the waters, which in many cases 
are nameless. From the coast of Sussex, Kent, Essex, 
Suffolk, and Norfolk, westward through the land occu- 
pied by the South Saxons and Middle English until the 
territory of west Wales, Wales, and the northern folk is 
reached, examples are met of wells dedicated to some 



82 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

form of ancient reverence not sufficiently distinct to 
stamp the nature of the cult. 

That Teutonic England should be thus marked off, 
as we shall presently see by examples, from the rest of 
Britain and Ireland is a significant fact in favor of the 
argument that the Teutons did not bring well worship 
with them, for in the very centers of their settlements 
and homes its survivals are found in almost the last 
stages of decay. At one place on the coast, however, an 
example is found where some details of local ritual are 
still preserved. This is at Bonchurch, in the Isle of 
Wight, where, on St. Boniface's Day, the well is deco- 
rated with flowers.* We meet with nothing of this 
kind, however, until we arrive nearer Wales — namely, 
in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Shrop- 
shire. Here is the region of garland-dressing, and the 
practice has been frequently described. In Worcester- 
shire and Staffordshire the custom is simple. In Der- 
byshire and Shropshire other practices occur in connec- 
tion with the well-dressing. For instance, at the holy 
well at Dale Abbey, in the former county, the devotee 
goes on Good Friday, between twelve and three o'clock, 
drinks the water three times, and wishes.f This may 
be only a survival of monastic practice, but in Shrop- 
shire the differentiation is more marked. Garland-dress- 

* Tompkins, Hist, of Isle of Wight, ii, 121. I can make nothing 
of the Walsingham wishing- wells except a derivation from monas- 
tic ceremonies. See the custom in Brand, ii, 370. 

f Antiquary, xxi, 97. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 83 

ing, though found in the eastern parts of the county, is 
almost entirely absent from the western, where wishing 
and healing wells are found.* At Eorrington, a town- 
ship in the parish of Chirbury, was a holy well at which 
a wake was celebrated on Ascension Day. The well was 
adorned with a bower of green boughs, rushes, and flow- 
ers, and a May-pole was set up. The people walked 
round the well, dancing and frolicking as they went. 
They threw pins into the well to bring good luck and 
to preserve them from being bewitched, and they also 
drank some of the water. Cakes were also eaten ; they 
were round flat buns from three to four inches across, 
sweetened, spiced, and marked with a cross, and they 
were supposed to bring good luck if kept.f 

In this instance garland-dressing is associated with 
other significant ceremonies, and associated so closely 
as to suggest that all parts of the ritual are equally an- 
cient. Now, in Shropshire Welsh influence is distinctly 
felt, and little patches of "Welsh population, locally 
known as Welsheries, exist to this day. I shall leave 
this part of our examination of Shropshire well worship 
with the observation that the evidence links on the more 
elaborate customs there found with the simple customs 
found in middle and southeastern England, and I shall 
return to Shropshire later on. 

Where the waters of the wells in the district just 
examined are used for healing powers it is almost in- 
variably the case that the disease to be cured is sore 

* Burne, Shropshire Folklore, p. 414. f Bume, op. cit., p. 434. 



81 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

eyes ; and Miss Burne, who noticed this peculiarity in 
the Shropshire wells, has made the acute suggestion that 
a legend in the prose Edda which tells how Odin gave 
his eye in return for a draught of water from the wis- 
dom-giving well of Mimir, might perhaps account for 
it.* I think it does ; and we have in this parallel be- 
tween English custom and Scandinavian myth the evi- 
dence I am in search of, showing that Teutonic influ- 
ences on well worship did in fact exist, though they 
were not powerful enough to keep well worship up as a 
cult in that part of the country where Teutonic people 
were most thickly settled. 

We next turn to northern England, where the popu- 
lation, Teutonic and Celtic of Aryan folk and the non- 
Aryan aborigines, were more mixed. The connection 
between the customs of well worship there and those of 
the district just examined is established by the existence 
of garland-dressing in North Lancashire, Westmore- 
land,! an( i on ^ ie borders. J Next we must examine the 
new features which are significant. At Sefton in Lan- 
cashire, it was customary for passers-by to drop into St. 
Helen's Well a new pin for good luck or to secure the 
favorable issue of an expressed wish, and by the turning 
of the pin-point to the north or to any other point of 
the compass conclusions were drawn as to the fidelity of 
lovers, date of marriage, and other love matters.* At 
Brindle is a well dedicated to St. Ellin, where on the 

* Shropshire Folklore, p. 422. f Ibid., p. 414. 

\ Henderson, Folklore, p. 3. * Antiq., xxi, 197. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 85 

patron day pins are thrown into the water.* Pin-wells, 
as they may be called, after the popular name given to 
them in some places, also existed at Jarrow and Wooler 
in Northumberland, at Brayton, Minchmore, Kaying- 
ham, and Mount Grace in Yorkshire, f 

Henderson informs us that " the country girls imag- 
ine that the well is in charge of a fairy or spirit who 
must be propitiated by some offering, and the pin pre- 
sents itself as the most ready or convenient, besides 
having a special suitableness as being made of metal." J 
This clearly indicates that the offering in the mind of 
the peasantry was to be a part of their clothes. At 
Great Cotes and Winterton in Lincolnshire, Newcastle 
and Benton in Northumberland, Newton Kyme, Thorp 
Arch, and Gargrave in Yorkshire, pieces of rag, cloth, 
or ribbon take the place of the pins, and are tied to 
bushes adjoining the wells,* while near Newton, at the 
foot of Eoseberry Topping, the shirt or shift of the dev- 
otee was thrown into the well, and according to whether 
it floated or sank so w r ould the sickness leave or be fatal, 
while as an offering to the saint, a rag of the shirt is 
torn off and left hanging on the briers thereabouts. || 

It is clear that while there is something in common 
between the customs attending well worship all over 

* Antiq., xxi, 197. 

f Antiq., xxii, Q(y, 67 ; xxiii, 77, 112, 113 ; xxiv, 27 ; Henderson, 
Folklore, p. 231. 

X Henderson, Folklore, p. 230. 

* Antiq., xxi, 265 ; xxii, 30; xxiii, 23, 77 ; xxiv, 27. 

1 Gent. Mag. Lib., Superstitions, pp. 143, 147 ; Brand, ii, 380. 



gg ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

England, a line of distinction has to be drawn as we 
proceed farther north. That rag- wells are the ancestors 
in custom of pin-wells scarcely needs suggestion, but I 
think we may go on to suggest that the bushes growing 
around the sacred wells in the north are the ancestors 
in custom of the bushes brought to decorate the wells in 
the south, and this is confirmed by the fact that where 
there are bushes adjoining the wells dressing with gar- 
lands does not take place. In the north, too, it must be 
noted that some wells were under the protection of the 
fairies or some specially named sprite, as at Brayton, 
Harpham, Holderness, and Atwick in Yorkshire, and 
Wooler in Northumberland. The course of well wor- 
ship in Teutonic England, then, may be traced from 
the examples of simple reverence in the south and 
east to examples of garland-dressing and pin-offerings 
towards the Welsh borders, and to examples, first of gar- 
land-dressing and pin-offerings, and finally to the parent 
form of rag-bush wells toward the northern border. 
Now rag-bushes have a distinct place in anthropolog- 
ical evidence which must be examined presently. In 
the mean time we carry on our investigations of well 
worship in Britain by turning to the forms of the cult 
in the Celtic-speaking districts. 

For this purpose we once more take up the Shrop- 
shire evidence, in order to pursue it from its English to 
its Welsh side. St. Oswald's Well, at Oswestry, is used 
for wishing and divination. One rite, says Miss Burne, 
is to go to the well at midnight, take some water up in 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 87 

the hand and drink part of it, at the same time forming 
a wish in the mind, throw the rest of the water upon a 
particular stone at the back of the well, and if the vo- 
tary can succeed in throwing all the water left in his 
hand upon this stone without touching any other spot, 
his wish will be fulfilled. Other forms of the ceremony 
to be adopted for the purpose of gaining the desired end 
are described,* but they are less distinctive than the one 
quoted, the point of which is the sprinkling of a special 
stone with the water from the well. Another element is 
introduced in the case of the well on the Devil's Cause- 
way between Buckley and Acton. Here, according to 
popular belief, the devil and his imps appear in the 
form of frogs ; three frogs are always seen together, and 
these are the imps, the largest frog, representing the 
devil, appearing but seldom, f Here for the first time 
we find the presiding spirit of the well represented in 
animal form. 

Pin-wells in Wales are met with at Rhosgoch in 
Montgomeryshire, J St. CynhafaPs Well in Denbigh- 
shire, St. Barruc's Well on Barry Island, near Cardiff, 
Ffynon Gwynwy spring in Carnarvonshire, and a well 
near Penrhos. # A new departure in the ritual of well 
worship, however, occurs in connection with St. Tegla's 

* Burne, Shropshire Folklore, p. 428 ; other Shropshire exam- 
ples are given in Antiq., xxii., 253. 

f Burne, op. cit., p. 416 ; cf> the Oxfordshire frog-prince story, 
Antiq., xxii, 68. 

X Antiq., xxii, 253. 

* Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, pp. 351, 352, 356. 



88 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

Well, about half-way between Wrexham and Ruthin. 
This well is resorted to for the cure of epilepsy. The 
custom is for the patient to repair to the well after sun- 
set and wash himself in its waters ; then, having made 
an offering by throwing fourpence into the water, to 
walk round the well three times and thrice repeat the 
Lord's Prayer. He then offers a cock or, when the 
patient is a woman, a hen. The bird is carried in a 
basket first round the well, then round the church. 
After this the patient enters the church, creeps under 
the altar, and, making the Bible his pillow and the com- 
munion cloth his coverlet, remains there till break of 
day. In the morning, having made a further offering 
of sixpence, he leaves the cock and departs. Should the 
bird die it is supposed that the disease has been trans- 
ferred to it, and the man or woman consequently cured.* 
Another and still more remarkable ceremony appertains 
to the well of St. iElian, not far from Bettws Abergeley, 
in Denbighshire. Near the well resided a woman who 
officiated as a kind of priestess. Any one who wished to 
inflict a curse upon an enemy resorted to this priestess, 
and for a trifling sum she registered in a book kept for 
the purpose the name of the person on whom the curse 
was wished to fall. A pin was then dropped into the well 
in the name of the victim, and the curse was complete. f 

*Arch. Camb., 1st Ser., i, 184; Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, 
p. 329. 

f Roberts, Cambrian Pop. Anfiq., p. 246 ; Wirt Sikes, op. cif., 
p. 355 ; Arch. Camb., 1st Ser., i, 46. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 89 

It is obvious that while the ritual of well worship in 
Wales is connected by some of its details, notably the 
offering of pins, with the ritual of English well worship, 
it contains perfectly distinctive elements, all of which 
tend toward the interpretation of the cult as of a rude 
and primitive type. The presiding spirit of the well in 
animal form in one example equates with the offering 
to the presiding spirit of a bird in another example, 
while the curse obtained through the agency of a 
priestess acting upon the name only of the intended 
victim presents a new feature. Animal gods and ani- 
mal offerings to gods mark clear and well-recognized 
features of primitive ritual, and the efficacy of the name 
as a tangible part of the person to whom it belongs, be- 
sides being represented among general primitive ideas,* 
is specially connected with the practice of working in- 
jury upon an enemy. Thus Ellis mentions an example 
among the Tshi-speaking people of Africa very nearly 
allied to the Welsh example. The formula is to take 
three short sticks, call aloud three times the name of 
the person to be killed, and while so doing to bind the 
sticks together and then lay them upon the suliman or 
tutelary deity, f 

Now Wales, as Professor Ehys has taught us, forms 
with Cornwall or West Wales the country of the Bry- 
thonic Celts, the second of the two bands of Aryan Celts 

* (7/. Mr. Clodd's admirable summary of this subject in Folk- 
lore Journal, vii. 135-161. 

f Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 107. 



90 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

who invaded and settled down in Britain. We must, 
then, turn now to examples of well worship in West 
Wales. Pin-wells and rag- wells are both represented in 
Cornwall — as, for instance, at Pelynt, St. Austel, and 
St. Koche, where pins are offered, and at Madron 
Well, where both pins and rags are offered.* The two 
fish sacred to St. Neot, and which never decreased or 
increased in size or number, must be considered as the 
sacred fish of the well, parallel to the sacred animals we 
have already seen in Wales ; and the idea of the well 
being under the care of a priestess, which occurred in 
Denbighshire, appears in the case of Gulval Well, in 
Fosses Moor. There an old woman was "a sort of 
guardian to the well," and instructed the devotees in 
their ceremonial observances. They had to kneel down 
and lean over the well so as to see their faces in the 
water, and repeat after their instructor a rhyming in- 
cantation, after which, by the bubbling of the water or 
by its quiescence, the reply of the spirit of the well was 
interpreted, f At Altarnum Well there is something 
approaching to human sacrifice. Its special function 
was the cure of madness, and the afflicted person stood 
w T ith his back to the pool, and from thence, by a sudden 
blow in the breast, was tumbled headlong into the 
water, where a strong fellow took him and tossed him 
up and down. J At Chapel Tiny rickety children are 

*Antiq„ xxi, 27, 28, 30; Hunt, Popular Romances, p. 295; 
Folklore Journal, ii., 349. 

t Hunt, op. cit., p. 291. % Ibid., p. 296. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 91 

dipped three times in the well against the sun, and 
dragged three times round the well in the same direc- 
tion.* 

As a rough summary of the Welsh evidence it may 
be stated that well worship in the district occupied by 
the later of the two Celtic invaders of Britain is far 
ruder and more primitive than in the district occupied 
by the Teutonic invaders of Britain. Either, then, 
modern culture has acted more powerfully upon Teu- 
tonic England than upon Wales, routing up the pagan 
rites that existed there, or else Teutonic culture itself 
acted against the cult of well worship, and so helped 
to whittle it down to its present insignificance. With 
regard to the first alternative, there are few scholars 
acquainted with the long catalogue of significant sur- 
vivals of Teutonic heathendom in Europe who would 
be prepared to assert that the Teutons, as a branch of 
the Aryan race, have been more susceptible to civiliza- 
tion than the Celts. On the second alternative, it may 
be remarked that so far as Teutonic culture may be 
considered as Aryan, it would be in all essential matters 
shared by the Celts, and that hence we should expect 
Celtic culture to have acted against well worship. But 
if it be remembered that the Celts were displaced from 
southeastern Britain by the Teutons and driven into 
the western lands of Wales and southwest Britain 
among the otherwise untouched aborigines, the sugges- 
tion is at once supplied that the Brythonic Celts w r ere 

* Hunt, Popular Romances, p. 300. 



92 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

absorbing in their last home some of the local worships 
of the conquered aborigines. In South Wales the physi- 
cal characteristics of this non- Aryan race survive,* and 
why not, therefore, the remnants of their beliefs, espe- 
cially those attached to definite local objects ? It does 
not seem possible at this stage to do more than state the 
hypothesis which the evidence thus suggests, and it re- 
mains for us to examine well worship in the districts 
occupied by the first Aryan invaders, named Goidelic 
Celts by Professor Rhys, and containing in their lan- 
guage proofs of their ancient incoming into a land of 
non- Aryans. These districts are situated in Scotland 
and Ireland. 

In Ireland well worship is nearly universal, and the 
offering of pieces of rag is the invariable accompani- 
ment. Among examples of rag- wells, which show the 
common basis which the cult has in all parts of the 
British Isles, may be mentioned Ardclinis, County An- 
trim ; Errigall-Keroge, County Tyrone ; Dungiven ; St. 
Bartholomew's Well at Pilltown, County Waterford; 
and St. Brigid's Well at Cliffony, County Sligo. f At 
Rathlogan, in Kilkenny, we meet with the cure of sore 
eyes already noted in Britain, and examples of this are 
said to be elsewhere frequently met with. J 

The locality of the Irish wells forms a very inter- 



* Beddoe, Races of Britain, p. 26. 

t Mason, Stat. Ace. of Ireland. I 328 ; iii, 27, 161 ; Proc. Roy. 
Hist, and Arch. Soc. of Ireland, 4th Ser., v, 370, 382. 

% Proc. Roy. Hist, and Arch. Assoc, of Ireland, 4th Ser., ii, 28(X 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 93 

esting aspect of tlieir history. " Along the old ways 
and not unfrequently hidden in the fields we discover 
interesting localities, with traces of ancient boundaries 
and primitive plantations, their verdant swards and 
leafy sweetness at once indicating their venerable old 
age ; and where the progress of modern reclamation has 
not obliterated the landmarks of previous generations 
the peculiar configuration of those places at once points 
them out as the scenes of former life and importance, 
often retaining in the midst of rural silence the name of 
the " street," the " green," the " common," the " cross," 
or some other title of equal significance. Here we usu- 
ally find an insignificant inclosure yet revered as holy 
ground, here on the appointed day the patron was held, 
. . . here, too, we find a holy well retaining the name 
of the ancient patron saint of the locality." * I quote 
this passage because it proclaims the archaic conditions 
surrounding the worship of wells — conditions which 
must be appreciated and understood, if we are to read 
aright the ethnological evidence to be derived from this 
section of our subject. 

The cult is so general in Ireland that it has not re- 
ceived the attention of Irish antiquaries as it deserves. 
The presence of animals or fish as guardians or tutelary 
deities of the wells is a marked feature. The fount of 
Tober Kieran, near Kells, County Meath, rises in a 
diminutive rough-sided basin of limestone of natural 

* Proc. Roy. Hist, and Arch. Assoc, of Ireland, 4th Ser., 
ii, 266. 



94 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

formation, and evidently untouched by a tool. In the 
water are a brace of miraculous trout " which, according 
to tradition, have occupied their narrow prison from time 
immemorial. They are said never in the memory of 
man to have altered in size, and it is said of them that 
their appearance is ever the same." Within about a 
mile of Cong, County Galway, is a deep depression in 
the limestone called " Pigeon Hole," and the sacred rivu- 
let running at the base of the chasm " is believed to 
contain a pair of enchanted trout," one of w r hich is said 
to have been captured some time ago by a trooper and 
cooked, but upon the approach of cold steel " the creat- 
ure at once changed into a beautiful young woman," and 
w T as returned to the stream. The well at Tullaghan, 
County Sligo, is know r n both in history and tradition. 
It is described as one of the wonders of Ireland by ISTen- 
nius, Giraldus Cambrensis, and 'Flaherty, and it is the 
subject of a curious legend in the book of " Dinnsen- 
chas " ; and a brace of miraculous trout, not always visi- 
ble to ordinary eyes, are said to have inhabited this pool. 
At Ballymorereigh, in Dingle, County Kerry, is a sacred 
well called Tober Monachan, where a salmon and eel 
appear to devotees who are to be favored by the guard- 
ian spirits of this well.* 

Thus far the ceremonies of well worship in Ireland 
present practically the same features, though in a far 
more intensified form, as those in Wales. The proces- 

* Proc. Roy. Hist and Arch, Soc. of Ireland, 4th Ser., v, 366, 
307,370; vii, 656. 



TIIE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 95 

sions round the well sunwise are an important and 
nearly universal part of the ceremony which the Irish 
evidence introduces into the subject, and the apparently 
unimportant detail occurring in a Shropshire example 
noted above, of pouring water over a particular stone, 
receives significant light from the examples in Ireland. 
Thus at Dungiven, after hanging their offerings of rags 
on the bush adjoining the well, the devotees proceed to 
a large stone in the river Eoe immediately below the 
old church, and, having performed an ablution, they 
walk round the stone, bowing to it and repeating 
prayers, and then, after performing a similar ceremony 
in the church, they finish the rite by a procession and 
prayer round the upright stone.* But besides restoring 
the unimportant details of Welsh ritual to an important 
place in well worship, Irish evidence introduces a 
wholly new feature. Thus at Tobernacoragh, a sacred 
well on the island of Innismurray, off the coast of 
Sligo, during tempestuous weather " it was the custom 
for the natives to drain the waters of this well into the 
ocean, as they believed by so doing, and by the offering 
up of certain prayers, the elemental war might cease 
and a holy calm follow." f In this case the connection 
between well worship and the worship of a rain-god is 
certain, for it may be surmised that if the emptying of 
the well allayed a storm, some complementary action 
was practiced at one time or other in order to produce 

* Mason. Stat. Ace. of Ireland, i, 328. 

f Proc. Roy. Hist, and Arch. Soc. of Ireland, 4th Ser., vii, 300. 



96 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

rain, and in districts more subject to a want of rain 
than this Atlantic island that ceremony would be accent- 
uated at the expense of the storm-allaying ceremony at 
Innismurray. 

Filially we pass into Scotland, where also the Goi- 
delic Celts settled. I will first briefly enumerate some in- 
stances to show the identity of customs connected with 
well worship in Scotland with those in the districts we 
have already examined. This will confirm the evidence, 
which seems to be pretty well established, that the 
foundation of well worship in all parts of the British 
Isles is the same — the rites and ceremonies are sub- 
stantially part and parcel of a common cult ; they differ 
in the degree in which they have survived in various 
places, but the forms of the survival do not differ in 
kind, because they are derived from a common origin. 

About fifty years after the Kef ormation it was noted 
that the wells of Scotland " were all tapestried about 
with old rags." * The best examples lasting to within 
modern times are -to be found in the islands round the 
coast, and in the northern shires, particularly in Banff, 
Aberdeen, Perth, Eoss, and Caithness. At Kilmuir, in 
the Isle of Skye, at Loch Shiant, or Siant, there was " a 
shelf made in the wall of a contiguous inclosure " for 
placing thereon " the offerings of small rags, pins, and 
colored threads to the divinity of the place." f At St. 

* The Booh of Bon Accord, p. 268. 

f Sinclair's Stat. Ace. of Scotland, ii, 557 ; New Stat. Ace. xiv, 
245 ; Martin, Western Isles, p. 140. 



TIIE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 97 

Mourie's Well, on Malruba Isle, a rag was left on the 
bushes, nails stuck into an oak tree, or sometimes a 
copper coin driven in.* At Toubirmore Well, in Gigha 
Isle, devotees were accustomed to leave " a piece of 
money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest variegated 
stones they could find," and at Tonbir Well, in Jura, 
they left " an offering of some small token, such as a 
pin, needle, farthing, or the like." f In Banffshire, at 
Montblairie, " many still alive remember to have seen 
the impending boughs adorned with rags of linen and 
woolen garments, and the well enriched with farthings 
and bodies, the offerings of those who came from afar 
to the fountain." J At Keith the well is near a stone 
circle, and some offering was always left by the devo- 
tees.* In Aberdeenshire, at Fraserburgh, " the super- 
stitious practice of leaving some small trifle " existed. || 
In Perthshire, at St. Fillan's Well, Comrie, the patients 
leave behind " some rags of linen or woolen cloth." A 
In Caithness, at Dunnet, they throw a piece of money 
in the water, and at Wick they leave a piece of bread 
and cheese and a silver coin, which they alleged disap- 
peared in some mysterious way. Q In Eoss and Cro- 
marty, at Alness, " pieces of colored cloth were left as 
offerings"; at Cragnick an offering of a rag was sus- 

* Gordon dimming, In the Hebrides, pp. 190, 191. 
f Martin's Tour, pp. 230, 242. 

X Robertson, Antiquities of Aberdeen and Banff, ii, 310. 

* Sinclair's Stat. Ace of Scot., v, 430. 

1 Ibid., vi, 9. A Ibid., xi, 181. 

j) New Stat. Ace, xv, 38, 161. 



93 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

pended from a bramble bush overhanging the well ; at 
Fodderty the devotees "always left on a neighboring 
bush or tree a bit of colored cloth or thread as a relic ; 
and at Kiltearn shreds of clothing were hung on the 
surrounding trees.* In Sutherlandshire, at Farr and at 
Loth, a coin was thrown into the well.f In Dumfries- 
shire, at Penpont, a part of the dress was left as an offer- 
ing, and many pieces have been seen " floating on the lake 
or scattered round the banks." J In Kirkcudbright- 
shire, at Buittle, " either money or clothes " was left,* 
and in Eenfrewshire, at Houston, " pieces of cloth were 
left as a present or offering to the saint on the bushes." 

These examples give a fair idea of what may be 
found on this subject by searching among the older 
topographical accounts. It is scarcely necessary to pur- 
sue these details with greater minuteness, and it may 
be stated as a general rule that " at all these fountains 
the invalid used the same ceremonies, approaching them 
sunwise," A or " deisil," as it was called. Nowhere is 
this particular so prominent as in Scotland, and it should 
be borne in mind in connection with the other ceremonies 
performed at the wells. 

There are now some more special details to note. 
The cure of madness by severe physical measures, such 
as we have noted in Ireland, is represented in Scotland 

* New Stat Ace, xiv, 246, 344, 382 ; Sinclair, i, 284. 

t New Stat. Ace, xv, 72, 191. \ Ibid., iv, 506. 

* Ibid,, iv, 203. || Sinclair's Stat. Ace, i, 316. 
A Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland, i, p. 156. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 99 

in Lochmaree Island, where, after drinking from the 
well, the patients were towed round the island ; * at 
Strathfillan, near Logierait, where the patient bathed 
after sunset and before sunrise the next morning, and 
was then laid on his back bound to a stone in the ruined 
chapel of St. Fillan, and if next morning he was 
found loose the cure was deemed perfect, f An impor- 
tant feature of this ceremony is the time — during the 
absence of the sun. At Parr, in Sutherlandshire, the 
patient, after undergoing his plunge, drinking of the 
water, and making his offering, " must be away from the 
banks so as to be fairly out of sight of the water before the 
sun rises, else no cure is effected." J On the other hand, 
to bathe in the well of St. Medan, at Kirkmaiden in Wig- 
tonshire, as the sun rose on the first Sunday in May was 
considered an infallible cure for almost any disease.* 
At Cragnick Well, at Avoch, in Ross, bathing took place 
under the same conditions as to time and date, but it 
was also necessary to spill a portion of the water upon 
the ground three times. || At Muthill, in Perthshire, 
the time for drinking the waters w r as before the sun 
rises or immediately after it sets, coupled with the con- 
dition that it was to be drunk out of a " quick cow's 
horn " (a horn taken from a live cow) ; " which indis- 
pensable horn was in the keeping of an old woman who 
lived near the well." A 

* New Stat, Ace. of Scot, xiv, 92. f New Stat' Ace, x, 1088. 
X Ibid., xv, 72. » Ibid., iv, 208. || Ibid., xiv, 382. 

A Ibid., x, 313. 



100 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

This latter custom reintroduces the idea of a priestess 
of the well, which we have seen first appears in Wales. 
Perhaps the leaving of a piece of silver or gold in the 
water " for the officiating priest " at Loth, in Sutherland- 
shire,* may be a survival of the same idea, but I think 
the survival is undoubted in those cases where the 
patient does not attend at the w T ell himself, but employs 
a substitute. It is noticeable that this substitute has 
to go through a most careful ceremonial. Thus at 
Penpont, in Dumfriesshire, the emissary of the patient, 
when he reached the well, "had to draw water in a 
vessel which was on no account to touch the ground, 
to turn himself round with the sun, to throw his offer- 
ing to the spirit over his left shoulder and to carry the 
water without ever looking back to the sick person. All 
this was to be done in absolute silence, and he was to 
salute no one by the way." f The elements of magic 
ritual preserved here are very obvious, and it is to be re- 
marked that silence is a condition imposed upon the 
devotees at many wells in Ireland and also in England. 

In the Isle of Lewis occurs a remarkable variant. 
" St. Andrew's Well, in the village Shadar," says Martin, 
" is by the vulgar natives made a test to know if a 
sick person will die of the distemper he labors under. 
They send one with a wooden dish to bring some of the 
water to the patient, and if the dish, which is then 
laid softly upon the surface of the water, turn round 
sunways they conclude that the patient will recover of 

* New Stat. Ace, xv, 191. f Stat. Ace. of Scot., iv, 506. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 101 

that distemper, but if otherwise, that he will die."* 
I am inclined to connect this with the vessel or caldron 
so frequently occurring in Celtic tradition, and which 
Mr. Nutt has marked as u a part of the gear of the 
oldest Celtic divinities," f perhaps of divinities older 
than the Celts. 

The connection between well worship and the cult 
of the rain-god appeared in the example at Innismurray 
Island, off the coast of Sligo. It also is a feature of the 
Scottish evidence. The well of Tarbat, in the island of 
Gigha, " is famous for having the command of the wind. 
Six feet above where the water gushes out there is a 
heap of stones, which forms a cover to the sacred fount. 
When a person wished for a fair wind this part was 
opened with great solemnity, the stones carefully re- 
moved, and the well cleaned with a wooden dish or 
clam-shell. This being done, the water was several 
times thrown in the direction from which the wished- 
for wind was to blow, and this action was accompanied 
by a certain form of words, which the person repeated 
every time he threw the water. When the ceremony 
was over the well was again carefully shut up to pre- 
vent fatal consequences, it being firmly believed that 
were the place left open it would occasion a storm 
which would overwhelm the whole island." J When to 

* Martin, Western Islands, p. 7. 

f Studies in the Legend of the Holy Grail, p. 185, and com- 
pare the magic cup in the Karen Kiver legend. — Journ. As. Soc. 
Bengal, xxxiv, (2) 219. 

\ Sinclair's Stat, Ace, viii, 52 ; Martin, Western Islands, p. 230. 



102 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

these striking details of magical ritual is added the 
fact that there were two old woman " who are said to 
have the secret," and through whom the ceremonial 
is to be accomplished, one can not but recognize the 
parallel to those priestesses of Sena and their rites 
with which classical authorities have acquainted us. 
One little detail is recorded by Martin which is not 
given in the otherwise fuller account just quoted — name- 
ly, that the well must always be " opened by a diroch, 
i. e., an inmate, else they think it would not exert its 
virtues," and this emphasis on the necessity of action 
being taken by a native as opposed to a foreigner or 
stranger is again recorded of a well rite in the isl- 
and of Egg, where, " if a stranger lie at this well in 
the night-time it will procure a deformity in some 
part of his body, but has no such effect on a native." * 

Finally, as to the guardian spirit of the Scottish 
wells. At Kilbride, in Skye, was a well with " one trout 
only in it ; the natives are very tender of it, and though 
they often chance to catch it in their wooden pails, they 
are very careful to preserve it from being destroyed." \ 
In the well at Kilmore, in Lorn, were two fish, black in 
color, never augmenting in size or number nor exhibit- 
ing any alteration of color, and the inhabitants of 
the place " doe call the saide fishes Easg Siant, that is 
to say, holie fishes." J This supplies an exact counter- 
part of the Irish beliefs. Other examples of a still 

* Martin, op cit., p. 277. t Ibid., p. 141. 

X Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, p. 412. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 103 

more interesting nature occur in Scotland, however. 
If, says Dalyell, a certain worm in a medicinal spring 
on the top of the hill in the parish of Strathdon were 
found alive it augured the recovery of a patient, and in a 
well of Ardnacloich, in Appin, the patient " if he bee to 
dye shall find a dead worme therein, or a quick one, if 
health bee to follow."* These, there can be little 
doubt, are the former deities of the spring thus reduced 
in status. But the most remarkable example occurs at 
a well near the church of Kirkmichael, in Banffshire. 
The guardian of the well assumed the semblance of a 
fly, who was always present, and whose every movement 
was regarded by the votaries at the shrine with silent 
awe, and as he appeared cheerful or dejected the 
anxious votaries drew their presages. This guardian 
fly of the well of St. Michael was believed to be exempt 
from the laws of mortality. " To the eye of ignorance," 
says the local account, "he might sometimes appear 
dead, but it was only a transmigration into a similiar 
form, which made little alteration to the real identity." f 
It seems impossible to mistake this as an almost perfect 
example where the guardian deity of the' sacred spring 
is represented in animal form. More perfect than any 
other example to be met with in Britain and its isles 
is this singular description of the traditional peasant 
belief ; it lifts the whole evidence as to the identification 
of wells in Britain as the shrine of ancient local deities 

* Dalyell, op. cit.. 506, 507. 

f Sinclair's Stat. Ace. of Scot., xii, 465. 



10J. ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

into close parallel with savage ideas and thought. The 
divine life of the waters, as Professor Eobertson Smith 
says, resides in the sacred fish that inhabits them, 
and he gives numerous examples analogous to the 
Scottish and Irish. But whether represented by fish, 
or frog, or worm, or fly, " in all their various forms, 
the point of the legends is that the sacred source is 
either inhabited by a demoniac being or imbued with 
demoniac life." * 

This is the highest point to be reached in the survey 
of well worship in Britain. The animal god is clearly 
an element of the primitive life of the worshipers at 
these wells, and it is here that research into origins 
must commence. From the small beginnings, where 
the survival of some ancient cult is represented by the 
simple idea of reverence for certain wells mostly dedi- 
cated to a Christian saint, through stages where a cere- 
monial is faintly traced in the well-dressing with gar- 
lands decked with flowers and ribbons; where shrubs 
and trees growing near the well are the recipients of 
offerings by devotees to the spirit of the well ; where 
disease and sickness of all kinds are ministered to ; where 
aid is sought against enemies ; where the gift of rain is 
obtained ; where the spirit appears in general forms as 
fairies and in specific form as animal or fish, and finally, 
it may be, in anthropomorphic form as Christian saint ; 
where priestesses attended the well to preside over the 
ceremonies ; with the several variants overlapping at 

* Religion of the Semites, p. 161. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 105 

every stage, and thus keeping the whole group of super- 
stition and custom in touch one section with another ; 
with the curious local details cropping up to illumine 
the atmosphere of pagan worship which is so evidently 
the basis of reverence for wells — there is every reason 
to identify this cult as the most widespread and the 
most lasting in connection with local natural objects. 
The deification of rivers, of mountain tops, of crags and 
weird places obtains here and there only ; the deifica- 
tion of the waters of the well occurs all over the land. 
And we are met with a very important fact of classifica- 
tion — that it is in the Celtic-speaking districts of our 
land where the rudest and most uncivilized ceremonial 
is extant, and, further, that it is in the country of the 
Goidelic, or earliest branch of the Celts, where this finds 
its most pronounced types. 

To show how this may be translated into terms of 
ethnology it will be best to reduce it into something 
like a formula. It must be remembered that we are 
dealing with survivals of an ancient cult, and the point 
is to ascertain where the survivals are the most per- 
fect — less touched, that is, by the incoming civiliza- 
tions which have swept over them. This formula 
might perhaps be arranged as shown by the table on 
the next page. 

From this it is clear that we may take the acts of 
simple reverence, garland- dressing, and dedication to a 
Christian saint as the late expression in popular tradi- 
tion of the earlier and more primitive acts tabulated 



106 



ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 



above. Taking the more primitive elements as our 
basis, the lowest point is obtained from English ground, 
which only rises into the primitive stage in the north- 
ern counties, where rag-bushes are found. On Welsh 
ground the highest point of primitive culture is the 
tradition of an animal guardian spirit. On Irish 
ground the highest point is the identification of the 
well deity with the rain-god, while on Scottish ground 
the highest points recognizable elsewhere are acentu- 
ated in degree. 





FORM OF WORSHIP. 


OFFERINGS. 


DEITY OR 
SPIRIT. 


o 




41 




1 8 

II 


be 
I c 
c *s 
<3 ~ 


1 1 

§ .5 
W 


4i bj, 

8 -S 


8 


bf S 




"5 




1! 


i| 

c .2 

1 ft 

9 


England : 
Eastern and South- 
eastern 


+ 
4- 

+ 


4- 
+ 
+ 
4- 

4- 

4- 
4- 


+ 
+ 
+ 
4 
+ 
4- 
+ 


4- 

4 


+ 
4 
4- 

4 


+ 
4- 
4- 
4- 


4- 
4- 
+ 
4- 


+ 

4 
4- 


+ 
4- 

+ 
4- 
4- 


4- 


+ 
4- 
4- 
4- 




Isle of Wight 

Western (middle) . . . 
Western 




Northern (a) 




(b) 

Wales 

Cornwall 


4- 

4- 


Ireland 




Scotland 


4- 











Now, I have proved above that the three forms in 
which offerings to the well deities are made are but 
variants of one primitive form — namely, the offerings 
of rags or parts of clothing upon bushes sacred to the 
well. This species of offering has been investigated 
with regard to its geographical distribution by Mr. 
M. J. Walhouse, and it is certain that it occupies a 
much wider area than that inhabited by Aryan peo- 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 107 

pies.* Thus, to quote a summary given by General Pitt- 
Eivers : " Burton says it extends throughout northern 
Africa from west to east ; Mungo Park mentions it in 
western Africa ; Sir Samuel Baker speaks of it on the 
confines of Abyssinia, and says that the people who 
practiced it were unable to assign a reason for doing so ; 
Burton also found the same custom in Arabia during 
his pilgrimage to Mecca ; in Persia Sir William Ouseley 
saw a tree close to a large monolith covered with these 
rags, and he describes it as a practice appertaining to a 
religion long since proscribed in that country ; in the 
Dekkan and Ceylon Colonel Leslie says that the trees 
in the neighborhood of wells may be seen covered 
with similar scraps of cotton ; Dr. A. Campbell speaks 
of it as being practiced by the Limboos near Darjeeling 
in the Himalaya, where it is associated, as in Ireland, 
with large heaps of stones ; and Hue in his travels men- 
tions it among the Tartars." f Here not only do we get 
evidence of the cult in an Aryan country like Persia 
being proscribed, but, as General Pitt-Eivers observes, 
" it is impossible to believe that so singular a custom 
as this, invariably associated with cairns, megalithic 
monuments, holy wells, or some such early pagan insti- 
tutions, could have arisen independently in all these 
countries." That the area over which it is found is co- 
terminous with the area of the megalithic monuments, 
that these monuments take us back to pre- Aryan people 

* Journ. Anthrop. Inst., ix, 97-106. 
f Journ. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., i, 64. 



108 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

and suggest the spread of this people over the area 
covered by their remains, are arguments in favor of a 
megalithic date for well worship and rag offerings. 

That I am concerned only with the element of eth- 
nology in this cult compels me to pass over the very 
important conclusions which an analysis of the rites of 
well worship suggests in connection with the primitive 
agricultural life of the pre- Aryan people of these islands, 
and I conclude what there is to say about well worship 
by a reference to a chronological fact of some interest 
and importance. 

Its highest form of rude savagery within the area 
which we have examined so minutely is found in the 
country of the old Picts of Scotland, who are identi- 
fied as non- Aryans by Professor Ehys. And this was 
the country where St. Columba found a " fountain 
famous among this heathen people [and] worshiped as 
a god," and where in its waters he vanquished and con- 
founded " the Druids " and " then blessed the fountain, 
and from that day the demons separated from the 
water." * In this non- Aryan country, as in ancient and 
perhaps pre-Semitic Arabia, " the fountain is treated as 
a living thing, those properties of its waters which we 
call natural are regarded as manifestations of a divine 
life, and the source itself is honored as a divine being, I 
had almost said a divine animal." f This pregnant 

* Reeve's edition of Adamnari's Life of St. Columba, lib. ii, 
cap. xi. 

f Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 168. 



THE LOCALIZATION OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF. 109 

summary of well worship in Arabia may without the 
alteration of a single word be adopted as the summary 
of well worship in Britain and its isles, and it confirms 
the conclusion that it is a non-Aryan cult attached to 
the most important of natural objects, which existed 
before Celt or Teuton spread over the land, and which 
retained, as in Pictland we have definite evidence, all 
the old faiths, whatsoever people might come and settle 
down around them. 

The power of localization in primitive belief is 
shown by these examples to have been a very significant 
and lasting power. Eesearch could be extended into 
other branches of the subject — to mountain worship, 
tree worship, rock worship ; but extension would do no 
more than confirm what I hope is now clear — that 
some of the great objects of nature common to all 
localities, conspicuous to all people living in the locali- 
ties, generated certain beliefs which remain perma- 
nently fixed upon the object, and thus afford lasting 
evidence of the continuity of early faiths which do 
not cease when newer faiths come into contact with 
them. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 

The analogies which exist between savage custom 
and European folklore suggested the first stage of the 
argument for the existence of ethnic elements in folk- 
lore. What is this folklore, which can be traced to 
nothing, outside of folklore, in the habitual beliefs and 
customs of civilized countries, and which is parallel only 
to the habitual beliefs and customs of savages ? A key 
to the answer was supplied when it was pointed out that 
there is an equation which consists, on the one side, of In- 
dian religious rites, in which Aryan and non- Aryan races 
take their respective parts, and, on the other side, of cus- 
tom in survival among European peasantry. From this 
it was argued that the appearance of the factor of race 
on one side of the equation made it necessary that it 
should also be inserted on the other side, and it was there- 
fore urged that the items of folklore thus ear-marked 
should be separated off into groups of non- Aryan and 
Aryan origins. 

It follows from this, then, that relics of different races 
are to be found in the folklore of countries whose chief 
characteristics have up to the present been identified by 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. m 

scholars as belonging to one race. So important a con- 
clusion necessitates some further inquiry into those items 
of folklore on the European side of the equation which 
are thus allocated to different race origins, and it may 
be urged that they should contain some quality which 
of itself, now that we have the key, will help to identify 
them as of non- Aryan or Aryan origin. We must not, 
in short, rely upon the comparative method for every- 
thing. Aryan belief and custom, though doubtless not 
easily distinguishable in some cases from non-Aryan 
belief and custom, is in other cases definitely and dis- 
tinctly marked off from it both in theory and practice. 
In folklore, therefore, this difference would also appear 
if the hypothesis as to origin is true. There must at 
least exist some beliefs and some usages which are in- 
consistent with the corresponding Aryan beliefs and 
usages — an inconsistency which in the last stages of 
survival does not perhaps present a very important 
consideration to the peasantry among whom the folk- 
lore obtains, but which, if traced back to the originals, 
may be shown to have been an important factor in the 
development of primitive Aryan thought and custom. 

Hence, in attempting to trace out the originals of 
modern folklore, it is clear that its inconsistencies must 
be carefully observed. For the purpose of the problem 
now under discussion we must note these inconsisten- 
cies, in order to see if they may be identified with two 
distinct lines of primitive custom and belief. On the 
one hand there would be the line of parallel to modern 



112 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. 

savagery, where the folklore, that is, is at the same level 
of development in human culture as the savage custom 
or belief ; on the other hand, there would be the line 
of parallel to a much higher culture than savagery. If 
these two inconsistent lines of development are both 
represented in folklore, though in spirit antagonistic to 
each other, the point is gained that in folklore is discov- 
erable at least two separate lines of descent. They must 
have been produced by the presence within the country 
where they now survive of different races living together 
in the relationship of conquered and conquerors ; they 
must have been subsequently handed on by generation 
after generation of the same races ; they must finally 
have been preserved by the peasantry long after dis- 
tinction of race in Europe had ceased to exist, as mere 
observance of custom, because, as such, they were part 
and parcel of their stock of life- action, not pushed out 
of existence by anything higher in religion or culture, 
but retaining their old place year after year, decade after 
decade, simply because their dislodgment, without ade- 
quate replacement from other sources, would have 
created a vacuum as foreign to nature in man as to 
nature in the world surrounding man. 

We have thus two distinct lines of parallel to trace 
out — a parallel with savagery and a parallel with a 
higher culture. The work before us is not one that can 
be accomplished off-hand. Folklore has a genealogy, so 
to speak, where the links are represented by the various 
changes which the condition of survival inevitably 



THE ETIIXIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. H3 

brings about. I have said that there is no development 
in folklore. All chances of development had been 
crushed out when the original elements of what is now 
classed as folklore were pushed back from the condition 
of tribal or national custom and belief to that of toler- 
ated peasant superstition. But this does not mean that 
no change of any sort has taken place. The changes of 
decay, degradation, and misapplication have taken the 
place of change by development. 

The marked features of these changes are capable of 
some classification, and I shall term them symbolism, 
substitution, and amalgamation. A practice originally 
in one particular form assumes another form, but still 
symbolical of the original ; or it is transferred to another 
object or set of objects ; or it becomes joined on to other 
practices and beliefs, and produces in this way a new 
amalgamation. All these processes indicate the change 
of decay incidental to survivals, not the change of de- 
velopment, and in tracing out the genealogy of folklore 
it is the changes of decay which mark the steps of the de- 
scent. "When children are made to jump through the 
midsummer fires for luck, human sacrifice has in folk- 
lore become symbolized ; when the blood of the cock is 
sprinkled, as in France, over the stones of a new build- 
ing, the animal object of the sacrifice has been substi- 
tuted for the human object ; when the wise man of the 
Yorkshire villages has assumed the character of part 
wizard or witch, part sorcerer, magician, or enchanter, 
and part conjurer, there has been an amalgamation of 



114 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

the characters and credentials of three or four entities 
in pagan priesthood. And so through all these changes 
we must endeavor to carefully work back step by step 
to the original form. That form as restored will repre- 
sent the true survival enshrined in folklore, and accord- 
ing to its equation with savage, or with an ascertained 
development from savage originals, will it be possible to 
decide to what early race it is to be attributed — the 
highly organized Aryan, capable of a culture equal to 
his language, or the ruder and more savage predecessors 
of the Aryan people. 

I will now give some examples of the ethnic geneal- 
ogy of folklore on the lines just traced out. They are 
examples chosen not for the special object of endeavor- 
ing to prove a point, but as evidence of what a careful 
examination of folklore in detail and in relation to its 
several component elements might produce if it were 
systematically and carefully pursued in this manner. 
The study is laborious, but the results are correspond- 
ingly valuable, particularly when it appears that from no 
other branch of knowledge can we hope to obtain infor- 
mation as to what our ancestors thought and believed. 

1. As an act of sorcery the mold from the church- 
yard, known as the " meels," was in northeastern Scot- 
land used for throwing into the mill-race in order to 
stop the mill-wheel. * That the mold is not used be- 
cause it is a consecrated element of the churchyard is 
suggested by the harmful result expected, and its con- 

* Orejor, Folklore., p. 210. 



THE ETIIXIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLOKE. U5 

nection with the dead is the only alternative cause for 
its use ; so that our examination of this superstitious 
practice points to some as yet unexplained use of prod- 
ucts closely connected with the dead. The importance 
of this conclusion is shown by an Irish usage — people 
taking the clay or mold from the graves of priests and 
boiling it with milk as a decoction for the cure of 
disease.* Again, in Shetland, a stitch in the side was 
cured by applying to the part some mold dug from a 
grave and heated, it being an essential of the ceremony 
that it must be taken from and returned to the grave 
before sunset, f In these cases the grave mold is used 
as food, and it is this circumstance more than the sup- 
posed cures effected by it which must be taken as the 
lowest point in the genealogy of this item of folklore. 

The next link in the genealogy shows that the use 
of grave-mold is only a substitution for the use of the 
corpse itself. The Irish have a superstition that to dip 
the left hand of a corpse in the milk-pail has the effect 
of making the milk produce considerably more cream 
and of a richer and better kind. J A new element pre- 
sented by the analysis of this form of the custom is that 
the result is not connected with the cure of disease but 

* Wilde's Beauties of the Boyne, p. 45 ; Croker, Researches in 
the South of Ireland, p. 170 ; cf Rev. Celt., v, 358. The dew col- 
lected from the grave of the last man buried in the churchyard as 
an application for the cure of goitre may perhaps be a remnant 
of this class of belief. It occurs at Launceston. — Dyer, English 
Folklore, p. 150. 

f Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii, 226. 

X Croker, op. cit., p. 234. 



116 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

with the increase of dairy produce. The limitation to 
a particular part of the dead body, the left hand, disap- 
pears in a custom once obtaining at Oran, in Koscom- 
mon. There a child was disinterred and its arms cut 
off, to be employed in the performance of certain mys- 
tic rites, the nature of which, unfortunately, are not 
stated by my authority.* Scottish witches are credited 
with opening graves for the purpose of taking out joints 
of the fingers and toes of dead bodies, with some of the 
winding sheet, in order to prepare a powder for their 
magical purposes, f In Lincolnshire a small portion of 
the human skull was taken from the graveyard and 
grated, to be used in a mixture and eaten for the cure 
of fits. J For the cure of epilepsy, near Kirkwall, a 
similar practice was resorted to, while in Caithness and 
the western isles the patient was made to drink from a 
suicide's skull. # 

Fresh light is thrown upon the nature of the magi- 
cal practices alluded to in these examples by the evi- 
dence afforded by Scottish trials for witchcraft. From 
the trial of John Brugh, November 24, 1643, it appears 
that he went to the churchyard of Glendovan on three 
several occasions, and each time took up a corpse. 
" The flesch of the quhilk corps was put aboue the byre 
and stable-dure headis " of certain individuals to de- 



* Wilde, Irish Popular Superstitions, p. 28. 
f Brand, Pop. Antiq., iii, 10. 

% Dyer, English Folklore, p. 147. 

# Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii, 225. 



THE ETIINIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. H7 

stroy their cattle.* This practice, when subjected to 
analysis, becomes divided into two heads : 

1. The distribution of human flesh among owners of 
cattle. 

2. The object of such distribution to do harm to 
these cattle-owners. 

We have thus arrived, step by step, at the bodies of 
the dead being used for some undetermined purposes. 
Another group of such practices surviving in folklore 
represents by symbolization a still further step in the 
genealogy. A note by Bishop "White Kennet speaks 
of a " custom which lately obtained at Amersden, in the 
county of Oxford, where at the burial of every corps 
one cake and one flaggon of ale just after the interment 
were brought to the minister in the church porch." f 
This, in the opinion of the writer, seems " a remainder " 
of the custom of sin-eating, and it is probable he is 
right. The sin-eating custom is thus given by Aubrey : 
" In the county of Hereford was an old custome at fu- 
neralls to have poor people who were to take upon them 
all the sinnes of the party deceased. The manner was, 
that when the corps was brought out of the house and 
layd on the biere, a loafe of bread was brought out and 
delivered to the sinne-eater over the corps, as also a 
mazar bowle of maple (gossips bowle) full of beer, 
which he was to drinke up, and sixpence in money, in 
consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) 

* Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 379. 
f Aubrey's Remaihes of GentUisme, p. 24. 



118 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

all the sinnes of the defunct, and freed him or her from 
walking after they were dead."* Aubrey specifically 
mentions Hereford, Eoss, Dynder (" volens nolens the 
parson of ye Parish"), and "in other places in this 
countie," as also in Breconshire, at Llangors, " where 
Mr. Gwin, the minister, about 1640, could no hinder ye 
performing of this ancient custome," and in North 
Wales, where, instead of a " bowle of beere they have a 
bowle of milke." 

This account is circumstantial enough. Bagford, in 
his well-known letter to Hearne (1715), mentions the 
same custom as obtaining in Shropshire, " in those 
villages adjoyning to Wales." His account is : " When 
a person dyed there was notice given to an old sire (for 
so they called him), who presently repaired to the place 
where the deceased lay and stood before the door of 
the house, when some of the family came out and fur- 
nished him with a cricket, on which he sat down facing 
the door. Then they gave him a groat which he put in 
his pocket ; a crust of bread which he ate ; and a full 
bowle off ale which he drank off at a draught. After 
this he got up from the cricket and pronounced with a 
composed gesture the ease and rest of the soul departed, 
for which he would pawn his own soul." f There seems 
some evidence of this custom being in vogue at 
Llandebie, near Swansea, until about 1850,J where the 

* Aubrey's Remaines of Gentilisme, pp. 35, 36. 

f Leland's Collectanea, i, lxxvi. 

% Archceologia Cambrensis* iii, 330; Journ. Anthrop., Inst., v, 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. H9 

ceremony was not unlike that described as having been 
practiced in the west of Scotland. " There were per- 
sons," says Mr. Napier, " calling themselves sin-eaters, 
who when a person died were sent for to come and eat 
the sins of the deceased. When they came their modus 
operandi was to place a plate of salt and a plate of bread 
on the breast of the corpse and repeat a series of in- 
cantations, after which they ate the contents of the 
plates and so relieved the dead person of such sins as 
would have kept him hovering around his relations, 
haunting them with his imperfectly purified spirit, to 
their great annoyance and without satisfaction to him- 
self." * The Welsh custom, as described by Mr. Mog- 
gridge, adds one important detail not noted with refer- 
ence to the other customs — namely, that after the cere- 

423 ; Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, pp. 326, 327. The Welsh prac- 
tice of the relatives of the deceased distributing bread and cheese 
to the poor over the coffin seems to me to confirm the evidence for 
the Welsh sin-eater. One of Elfric's canons says, inter alia, " Do 
not eat and drink over the body in the heathenish manner." — 
Wilkins, Concilia, i, 255. 

* Napier, Folklore of the West of Scotland, p. 60. I am not 
quite satisfied with this example. Mr. Napier evidently is not 
minutely describing an actual observance, and in his book he fre- 
quently refers to customs elsewhere. In this instance he does not 
appear to be alluding to any other than Scottish customs, and it 
is to be noted that his details differ from Aubrey's and Bagford's, 
nor can I trace any authority for his details except his own obser- 
vation, unless it be from Mr. Moggridge's account in Arch. C am- 
ir ensis, which, however, it does not follow exactly. He is so reli- 
able in respect of all his own notes that I should not doubt this 
if it were not for the certain amount of vagueness about this 
passage. 

9 



120 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

mony the sin-eater " vanished as quickly as possible 
from the general gaze." 

The chief points in these remarkable customs are : 

(1) The action of passing the food over the corpse, as 
if thereby to signify some connection with the corpse. 

(2) The immediate disappearance of the sin-eater; 
and 

(3) The object of the ceremony to prevent the spirit 
of the deceased from annoying the living. 

In these customs clearly something is symbolized 
by the supposed eating up of the sins of the deceased.* 
As Mr. Frazer has observed in reference to these prac- 
tices, " the idea of sin is not primitive." f I do not think 
with Mr. Frazer that the older idea was that death 
was carried away from the survivors. Something much 
less subtle than this must have originated all these prac- 
tices, or they could not have been kept up in so material- 
istic a form. Folklore tends to become less material as 
it decays ; it goes off into almost shadowy conceptions, 
not into practices which of themselves are horrid and re- 
volting. These practices, then, must be the indicator 
which will help us to translate the symbolism of folk- 
lore into the usage of primitive life. The various forms 

* 1 must acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Hartland for 
the use I make of the custom of sin-eating. He was good enough 
to draw my attention to a study of the subject he was preparing, 
and which since the above passage was written he has read before 
the Folklore Society. 

f Frazer, Golden Bough, ii, 152, note ; Miss Burne also seems 
to suggest this idea (Shropshire Folklore, p. 202). 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 121 

of the survival seem to indicate that we have here a group 
of customs and beliefs relating to some unknown cult of 
the dead — a cult which, when it was relegated to the po- 
sition of a survival by some foreign force which arrested 
development and only brought decay and change, showed 
no tendency toward any high conception of future bliss 
for the deceased in spirit-land ; a cult which was savage in 
conception, savage in the methods of carrying out the 
central idea which promoted it, savage, too, in the results 
which must have flowed from it and affected the minds 
and associations of its actors. 

What is the savage idea connected with the dead 
which underlies these gloomy and disgusting practices 
preserved in folklore ? Let me recall a passage in Strabo 
relating to the practices of early British savages. The 
inhabitants of Ireland were cannibals, but they also 
" deemed it honorable to eat the bodies of their deceased 
parents." * Kow, the eating of dead kindred is a rite 
practiced by savages in many parts of the world, and it 
is founded primarily on the fear which savage man had 
for the spirits of the dead. 

The conception of fear in connection with the dead 
is still retained in folklore. Miss Burne, with great 
reason, attributes the popular objection to carrying a 
corpse along a private road to the dread lest the dead 
should come back by the road the corpse traveled. f In 
Scotland the same dread is expressed by the curious 

* Strabo, lib. iv, cap. v. sect. 4. 
f Shropshire Folklore, p. 303. 



122 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

practice of turning upside down all the chairs in the 
room from which the corpse has just been taken ;* in Eng- 
land by the practice of unhinging the gate and placing 
it across the entrance, and of carrying the corpse to the 
grave by a roundabout way.f There is also the practice 
in Scotland of keeping up a dance all night after a 
funeral, J which by the analogous practice among the 
Nagas of India must be attributed to the desire to get 
rid of the spirit of the deceased.* The Caithness Scots, 
too, share with some South African tribes a deep-rooted 
reluctance to speak of a man as dead.] The point of 
these practices is that the returning ghosts are not 
friendly to their earthly kindred, do not represent the 
idea of friendly ancestral spirits who, in their newly- 
assumed character of spirits, will help their kindred on 
earth to get through the troubles of life. The mere 
fear of ghosts, which is the outcome of modern super- 
stition, does not account for these practices, because it 
does not cover the wide area occupied by them in savage 
life which Mr. Frazer has so skillfully traveled over. In 
this connection, too, I would mention that, associated 
with the outcast and the criminal, the same idea of fear 



* Folklore Record, ii, 214. 

f Frazer, in Journ. Anthrop, Inst, xv, 72. 
X Napier, Folklore of West of Scotland, p. 66; Folklore Journal, 
iii, 281; Pococke's Tour through Scotland, 17G0, p. 88. 

* Owen's Notes on the Naga Tribes, p. 23. 

| Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xx, 121 ; Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 
471; it is also an Australian belief.— Tran s. Ethnol, Soc, i, 299, 
iii, 40. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 123 

for the ghosts of the dead is perfectly obvious, which 
introduces the further suggestion that in this case we 
have evidence of a certain degraded class of the modern 
population becoming identified in the peasant mind — in 
the minds of those, that is, who have kept alive the oldest 
instincts of prehistoric times — with the ideas and j3rac- 
tices which once belonged to a fallen and degraded race 
existing in their midst. For my present purpose I will 
quote from Mr. Atkinson the following passage : " There 
is no doubt that the self-murderer or the doer of some 
atrocious deed of violence, murder, or lust was buried 
by some lonely roadside, in a road-crossing, or by the wild 
wood side, and that the oak, or oftener thorn stake, was 
driven through his breast. These characters could not 
rest in their graves. They had to wander about the 
scenes of their crimes or the places where their un- 
hallowed carcasses were deposited, unless they were pre- 
vented, and as they wanted the semblance, the sim- 
ulacrum, the shadow substance of their bodies, for that 
purpose, the body was made secure by pinning it to the 
bottom of the grave by aid of the driven stake. And 
there were other means adopted with the same end in 
view. The head was severed from the body and laid be- 
tween the legs or placed under the arm — between the 
side and the arm, that is — or the feet and legs were bound 
together with a strong rope ; or the corpse might be 
cut up into some hollow vessel capable of containing 
the pieces, and carried away quite beyond the pre- 
cincts of the village and deposited in some bog or mo- 



121 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

rass."* These ghastly ceremonies throw much light on 
the old folk-belief as to the dead. What is now con- 
fined to the suicide or criminal in parts of England is 
identical w T ith ceremonies performed by savage tribes for 
all their dead, and it is impossible to put on one side the 
suggestion that we have in this partial survival relics of 
a conception of the dead which once belonged to an 
ethnic division of the people, and not to a caste created 
by the laws of crime. 

I am anxious in this first attempt at definitely trac- 
ing out the genealogy of a particular element in folklore 
to show clearly that the process is a justifiable one. It 
will not be possible in all instances to do this, partly on 
account of space and partly on account of the singular 
diversity of the evidence. But in this instance the 
attempt may perhaps be made, and I will first proceed to 
set down, in the usual manner of a genealog}^, the various 
stages already noted in this case, and I will then set down 
the parallel genealogy supplied from savagery. 

* Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, pp. 217, 218. 
The modern reason for these doings is the idea of " ignominy, ab- 
horrence, execration, or what not." 

f Ancient Peruvians (Dormer, Origin of Primitive Supersti- 
tions, p. 151 ; Hakluyt, Bites of the Incas, p. 94); Battahs of Su- 
matra (Featherman, Soe. Hist., 2d div., 336 ; Journ. Ind. Arch., ii, 
241 ; Marsden, Sumatra, p. 390) ; Philippine Islanders (Feather- 
man, op. cit., p. 496) ; Gonds and Kookies of India (Rowney, Wild 
Tribes of India, p. 7 ; Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, xvi, 14) ; Queens- 
land (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., ii, 179 ; viii, 254; J. D. Lang's Queens- 
land, pp. 333, 355-357) ; Victoria (Smythe's Aborigines of Victoria, 
i, pp. xxix, 120); Maoris (Taylor's New Zealand, p. 221). All 
these examples arc not, it should be stated, attributed to fear of 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 



125 



Eating of dead kindred. 



British savagery. 



Inhabitants 
of Ireland. 



Modern savagery. 



Survival in folklore. 

Relics of the dead 
[Practice treated in revolt- 
arrested.] ing manner. 



Dead body = food taken from 
to eat the sin 
of the deceased. 



Dead body = cut up and placed 
over cattle byres. 



Corpse hand = dipped in milk 
for increase of 
supply. 

Corpse fingers == magic rites 



Development 
or change. 

Dead body = food eaten 
out of the 
hand4 

Dead body == distributed 
among 
community.* 

Pounded = eaten by 
bones or j kinsmen. Q 
ashes 



Water in = drank by 
which body kinsmen.A 
is placed 



and toes 



of wishes, 
harmful (?). 



Practice 

still 

continued 

by many 

races.t 



Corpse arms = magic rites 
and legs unknown. 



Grave mold = cure of disease, 
[of priest] 



Grave mold = harm to mill. 



dead kindred ; but the whole point as to the origin of the practice 
is one for argument and more evidence. These examples do not 
exhaust the list ; they are the most typical. 

X The Kangras of India.— Punjab N. & Q., i, 86. 

* The Koniagas (Spencer, Principles of Sociology, p. 262. It is 
remarkable that this custom is the alternative to immersing the 
dead body and drinking the water) ; Australians (Smythe's Abo- 
rigines of Victoria, i, 121 ; Featherman, op. cit., pp. 157, 161). 

J Tarianas and Tucanos. — Spencer, op. cit., 262. 

A Koniagas (see note # . ) 



126 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

This genealogy seems to me clear and definite, and 
its construction is singularly free from any process of 
forced restoration. Looked at from the point of view 
of geographical distribution, it has to be pointed out 
that this group of folklore is found in isolation in the 
outer parts of the country. The significance of its dis- 
tribution in certain localities must be taken into ac- 
count, and it is important to draw attention to the 
isolation of the several examples. It clearly does not 
represent a cult of the dead generally present in the 
minds of the peasantry. A totally different set of be- 
liefs has to be examined for this, and to these beliefs I 
now turn for evidence of that inconsistency in folklore 
which I have urged shows distinct ethnic origins. The 
facts will then stand as follows : On the one hand there 
is a definite representation of a cult of the dead based 
on the fear of dead kindred and found in isolated 
patches of the country ; on the other hand there is a 
definite representation of a cult of the dead based on 
the love of dead kindred and found generally prevalent 
over the country. 

The survivals of this cult in folklore are numerous. 
As soon as death has taken place doors and windows 
are opened to allow the spirit to join the home of de- 
parted ancestors ; * the domestic animals are removed 
from the house ; f the bees are given some of the funeral 

* Brand, ii, 231; Plenderson, Folklore of Northern Counties, 
pp. 53, 56 ; Dyer, English Folklore, p. 230. 
f Napier, p. 60. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 127 

food and are solemnly told of the master's death by the 
nearest of kin ; * the fire at the domestic hearth is put 
out ; f careful watch is made of the corpse until its 
burial ; % soul-mass cakes are prepared and eaten. # 

A singular unanimity prevails as to the reasons for 
these customs, which may be summed up as indicating 
the one desire to procure a safe and speedy passage of 
the soul to spirit-land, or, as it is put in modern folk- 
lore, " lest the devil should gain power over the dead 
person." || 

In the removal of the domestic animals we can trace 
the old rite of funeral sacrifice. Originally, says Na- 
pier, the reason for the exclusion of dogs and cats arose 
from the belief that if either of these animals should 
chance to leap over the corpse and be permitted to live 
the devil would gain power over the dead person. In 
Xorthumberland this negative way of putting the case 
is replaced by a positive record of the sacrifice of the ani- 
mals that leaped over the coffin. A But probably human 
sacrifice, that pitiable kindness to the dead, is symbol- 
ized in the Highland custom at funerals, where friends 
of the deceased person fought until blood was drawn — 

* The examples of this custom are very numerous. I have sum- 
marized the principal of them in Folklore, iii, 12. 

+ Pennant, Tour in Scotland, i, 44. 

\ Napier, Folklore of West Scotland, p. 62. 

* Brand, i, 392 ; ii, 289. || Napier, pp. 60, 62. 

A Henderson, p. 59. Cats are locked up while the corpse re- 
mains in the house in Orkney (Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, 
vol. i, p. lxxv) ; and in Devonshire (Dyer's English Folklore, p. 
109). 



128 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

the drawing of blood being held essential.* The real 
nature of the soul-mass cakes as the last vestiges of the 
old rite of funeral sacrifice to the manes of the deceased 
has been proved by Dr. Tylor.f The striking custom 
of putting out the fire is to be interpreted as a desire 
not to detain the soul at the altar of the domestic god, 
where the spirits of deified ancestors were worshiped. 
And the message to the bees is clearly best explained, I 
think, as being given to these winged messengers of the 
gods I so that they may carry the news to spirit-land of 
the speedy arrival of a new-comer. 

All these solemnities betoken very plainly that we 
are dealing with the survivals in folklore of the Aryan 
worship of deceased ancestors, one of the most generally 
accepted conclusions of comparative culture.* I need 
scarcely point out how far removed it is, as a matter of 
development in culture, from the more primitive fear of 
dead kindred. Manes worship, based upon the fear of 
the dead, is found in many parts of the primitive 

* Folklore Journal, iii, 281. \ Primitive Culture, ii 38. 

X The bees supplied the sacred mead and were therefore in 
direct contact with the gods. Cf. Schrader, Prehistoric Antiqui- 
ties of the Aryans, p. 321. 

* Hearn, Aryan Household, p. 54 ; Maine, Ancient Law, p. 
191 ; Spencer, Principals of Sociology, pp. 314-316 ; De Coulanges, 
Cite Antique, pp. 33, 71 ; Kelly, Indo-European Folklore, p. 45 ; 
Revue Celtique, ii, 486 ; Cox, Introd. to Myth, and Folklore, p. 
168 ; Elton, Origins of Engl. Hist., p. 211, are the most accessible 
authorities, to which I may perhaps add my Folklore Relics of 
Early Village Life, pp. 90-123. Rogers in his Social Life in 
Scotland, iii, 340, 341, has a curious note on the lares familiares 
or wraiths of the Highlanders, connecting them with the ghosts 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 129 

world ; * the worship of a domestic god, based upon 
his helpfulness, is found also.f But, except among the 
Aryan peoples, these two cults do not seem to have 
coalesced into a family religion. In this family religion, 
centered round the domestic hearth where the ancestral 
god resided, the fear of dead kindred has given way 
before the conception of the dead ancestor who had 
" passed into a deity [and] simply goes on protecting 
his own family and receiving suit and service from them 
as of old ; the dead chief [who] still watches over his 
own tribe, still holds his authority by helping friends 
and harming enemies, still rewards the right and sharply 
punishes the wrong." £ And, in the meantime, the 
horrid practices and theories of savagery which we have 
previously examined are contrasted, in Aryan culture, 
"with the funeral ceremony whereby the kinsmen of the 
deceased perform the last rites, and with the theory that 
these rites are necessary to insure that the ghosts of the 
dead take their place in the bright home of deified an- 
cestors, 4 * both practice and theory being represented in 

of departed ancestors. I note Schraders objection in Prehistoric 
Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 425, that the unsatisfactory 
state of the Greek evidence prevents him from accepting the gen- 
eral view, but I think the weight of evidence on the other side 
tells against this objection. 

* Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 103-109 ; Spencer, Principles of 
Sociology, pp. 304-313. 

f Cf my Folklore Relics, pp. 85-90. 
% Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 103. 

# This is a common Greek and Hindu conception. — Odyss., xi, 
54 ; Iliad, xxiii, 72 ; Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, pp. 20G, 255. 



130 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

folklore by the absolute veto upon disturbing the graves 
of the dead.* 

These facts of Aryan life, indeed, bring us to that 
sharp contrast which it presents to savage life in its 
conception of the family. If ancestors are revered and 
this. reverence finds expression in the nature of the 
funeral customs, so are children brought into the pale 
of the family by customs indicative of some sacred cere- 
mony connecting the new house inmates with the gods 
of the race. I agree with Kelly in his interpretation 
of the stories of the feeding the infant Zeus with the 
honey from the sacred ash and from bees. "Among 
the ancient Germans," says Kelly, "that sacred food 
was the first that was put to the lips of the new-born 
babe. So it was among the Hindus, as appears from a 
passage in one of their sacred books. The father puts 
his mouth to the right ear of the new-born babe, and 
murmurs three times, 5 Speech ! Speech ! ' Then he 
gives it a name. Then he mixes clotted milk, honey, 
and butter, and feeds the babe with it out of pure gold. 
It is found in a surprising shape among one Celtic peo- 
ple. Lightfoot says that in the Highlands of Scotland, 
at the birth of an infant, the nurse takes a green stick 
of ash, one end of which she puts into the fire, and 
while it is burning receives in a spoon the sap that oozes 
from the other, which she administers to the child as 
its first food. Some thousands of years ago the ances- 
tors of this Highland nurse had known the fraxinus 

* " Choice Notes," Folklore, p. 8. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLOKE. 131 

omus in Arya, and now their descendant, imitating their 
practice in the cold North, but totally ignorant of its 
true meaning, puts the nauseous sap of her native ash 
into the mouth of her hapless charge." * I have quoted 
this long passage because it shows, as Kelly expresses it, 
" the amazing toughness of popular tradition," and be- 
cause it brings into contrast the savage practice of the 
Irish mothers who dedicated their children to the sword. 
Solinus tells us that the mother put the first food of her 
new-born son on the sword of her husband, and, lightly 
introducing it into his mouth, expressed a wish that he 
might never meet death otherwise than in war and amid 
arms. Even after the introduction of Christianity 
the terrible rites of war were kept up at the ceremonials 
of infancy. Train says that a custom identical with 
that just quoted from Solinus was kept up, pi^or to the 
Union, in Annandale and other places along the Scot- 
tish border, f and Camden records that the right arm of 
children was kept unchristened so that it might deal a 
more deadly blow. J The same usage obtained in the 
borderland of England and Scotland, # and it is no 
doubt the parent of the more general custom in the 
north of England not to wash the right arm of the 
new-born infant, so that it could the better obtain 
riches. || 

* Kelly, Indo-European Folklore, pp. 145, 146. 
f History of Isle of Man, ii. 84, note 1. 

X Britannia, s. v., " Ireland." 

# Guthrie, Old Scottish Customs, p. 144. 

1 Henderson, Folklore of Northern Counties, p. 16. 



132 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

Not only are these savage rites in direct contrast to 
the food rites of the early Aryan birth ceremony, but 
they also stand out against the relics of Aryan house- 
birth preserved in folklore, and which are centered 
round the domestic hearth.* The child, put on a cloth 
spread over a basket containing provisions, was con- 
veyed thrice round the crook of the chimney, or was 
handed across the fire in those places where the hearth 
was still in the center of the room.f In Shropshire the 
first food is a spoonful of butter and sugar. J 

But, again, there is another contrast to be drawn. 
It is the father who, according to Pennant, prepares the 
basket of food and places it across the fire, and it is the 
father, in more primitive Aryan custom, who mixes the 
sacred food and first feeds the child. In the Irish rites 
just noticed it is the mother who acts the part of do- 
mestic priest. This contrast is a very significant one. 
The principle of matriarchy is more primitive than that 
of patriarchy, and it may point to a distinction of race. 
The position of the mother in Irish birth rites is not an 
accidental one. It is of permanent moment as an ele- 
ment in folklore. Mothers in many places retain to 
this day their maiden names,* and this in former days, 

* Hearn, Aryan Household, p. 73. 

f Gordon Cummin g, In the Hebrides, p. 101 ; Dalyell, Darker 
Superstitions of Scotland, p. 176 ; Pennant, Tour in the High- 
lands, Hi, 46. 

% Burne, Shropshire Folklore, p. 284. 

* Athlone (Mason's Stat. Ace. of Ireland, iii, 72) ; Knockando, 
Elginshire (New Stat. Ace. of Scotland, xiii, 72). 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 133 

if not at present, suggests that children followed their 
mother's rather than their father's name and kindred. 
The importance of these considerations in connection 
with birth ceremonies is clearly shown by the fact of 
the survival of the singular custom of the " couvade," 
where the husband takes to his bed at the birth of a 
child and goes through the pretense of being ill. " The 
strange custom of the couvade," says Professor Ehys, 
" was known in Ireland, at least in Ulster, and when 
the great invasion of that province took place under the 
leadership of Ailill and Medb, with their Firbolg and 
other forces, they found that all the adult males of the 
kingdom of Conchobar Mac Nessa were laid up, so that 
none of them could stir hand or foot to defend Ijis 
country against invasion excepting Cuchulainn and his 
father alone." * No doubt this legend takes us into the 
realms of mythology, to the battles and doings of gods 
rather than of men ; but Professor Ehys has shown 
good cause for believing that the mythological reason for 
the death or inactivity of the Ultonian heroes had 
ceased to be intelligible at an early date, " long, prob- 
ably, before any Aryan wanderer had landed in these 
islands," and so the persistence of the myth of the 
Ultonian inactivity naturally came to be interpreted 
sooner or later in the light of the only custom that 
seemed to make it intelligible — namely, that of the 
couvade. Without concerning ourselves about the 

* Celtic Heathendom, p. 627; cf pp. 140, 363, 471, 482, 627, 
646 ; Rev. Celt., vii, 227. 



131 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. 

mythology connected with this particular episode, here 
is the custom itself standing out clearly and distinctly, 
and its duration of " four days and five nights " may be 
the period allotted to the primitive formula. It is to be 
traced also in Scotland. A man who had incurred the 
resentment of Margaret Hutchesone " that same night 
took sicknes : and had panes as a woman in chyld- 
birth." * On the borders of Scotland, as lately as the 
year 1772, there was pointed out to Mr. Pennant the 
offspring of a woman w T hose pains had been transferred 
to her husband by the midwife. The legends of the 
saints relate that Merinus, a future bishop, having been 
refused access to the castle of some Irish potentate 
whose spouse was then in labor, and treated with con- 
tempt, prayed for the transference of her sufferings to 
him, which ensued immediately.! In Yorkshire, too, a 
custom exists, or existed, which seems without doubt to 
be a survival of this peculiar custom. " When an ille- 
gitimate child is born it is a point of honor with the 
girl not to reveal the father, but the mother of the girl 
goes out to look for him, and the first man she finds 
keeping his bed is he." J These are the last remnants 
in custom, as well as in tradition, of a singularly sym- 
bolical practice, which had to do with some aspect of 
society when motherhood, not fatherhood, was the ini- 



* Quoted in Dalyell's Darker Superstition^ p. 133. 
f Pennant, Tour 1772, p. 79. 

% Academy, xxv, p. 112. Unfortunately the exact place in 
Yorkshire where this custom obtains is not stated. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 135 

tial point of birthright, and which, in the opinion of 
most writers who have investigated the subject, is to be 
classed as non-Aryan in origin — an opinion which is 
fortified by its prevalence among the Basque people of 
to-day, while elsewhere in Europe it is found only by 
digging among the mass of folklore, and then only in 
such isolation as to suggest that it does not belong to 
the main current of traditional peasant life. 

Alike, then, in customs relating to the dead and in 
customs relating to birth there are two streams of 
thought, not one. The one is savage, the other is 
Aryan. That both are represented in folklore indicates 
that they were arrested in their development by some 
forces hostile to them, and pushed back to exist as sur- 
vivals if they were to exist at all. At the moment of 
this arrest the one must have been practiced by savages, 
and we may postulate that the arresting force was the 
incoming Aryan culture ; the other must have been 
practiced by Aryans, and we may postulate that the 
arresting force was Christianity. Thus the presence of 
savage culture and Aryan culture, represented by 
savages and Aryans, is proved by the evidence of folk- 
lore.* 

2. It is possible to compare the cult of the dead, 
which has just been traced out in its dual line of gen- 

* Mr. Elton declares for the pre-Celtic origin of the sin-eating, 
among other customs. They " can hardly be referred to any other 
origin than the persistence of ancient habits among r the descend- 
ants of the Silurian tribes. ,, — Origins of English History, p. 179. 
10 



136 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLOKE. 

ealogy, with a practice which relates to the treatment 
of the living. Human life among savages is not valued 
except for what it is worth to the tribe. Female chil- 
dren and the aged and infirm are alike sacrificed to the 
primitive law of economics, and no sacred ties of kinship 
step across to thwart the stern necessities of savage life. 
Within the memory of credible witnesses, says Miss 
Burne, affectionate relatives have been known to hasten 
the moment of death, and she quotes a singular case 
of strangulation in support of her general statement.* 
Aubrey has preserved an old English " countrie story " 
of " the holy mawle, which (they fancy) hung behind 
the church dore, which, when the father was seaventie, 
the sonne might fetch to knock his father on the head 
as effete and of no more use." f In a fifteenth-century 
MS. of prose romances, Sir Percival, in his adventures 
in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease, 
congratulates himself that he is not like those men of 
Wales, where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill 
them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed. J Here 
are three distinct references to the custom of killing the 
aged, and it seems impossible to get away from the dis- 
agreeable conclusion that the actual practice has not so 
long since died out from among us. # Its opposition to 

* Shropshire Folklore, p. 297. 

f Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, p. 19. 
% Nutt, Legend of the Holy Grail, p. 44. 

* The practice is recorded in Prussia and Sweden. See Keys- 
ler, quoted by Elton, Origins of Eng. Hist, p. 91, and Geiger, 
Hist. Sweden, pp. 31, 32. 



TEE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. J.37 

the Aryan conception of the sacred ties of kindred does 
not need proof, and I have attempted to trace out the 
origin of some Scottish and English tales as due to the 
first Aryan observation of this strange practice of their 
non- Aryan opponents.* 

3. I want to point out that these customs, illustrat- 
ing the position of enmity and fear between man and 
man, and opposed, therefore, to the theory of tribal kin- 
ship, where men of one kin are knit together by ties 
which, if not to be properly characterized by the term 
" love," at all events allay the feelings of enmity, become 
of singular importance as a test of the culture of a 
people when the evidence becomes cumulative. If when 
kindred are dead they are feared as enemies, if when 
they cease to be of use to the community they are 
promptly dispatched to the land of spirits, it would be 
a part of the same attitude of man toward man that 
sickness would be caused by the devilish practices of 
men, and might be alleviated by the sacrifice of one 
human being for another. There is, in the presence of 
such practices, no sacred tribal life to preserve and 
cherish such as there was in Aryan society, and it seems 
certain that this group of custom and belief belongs to 
a level of culture lower than Aryan. I proceed, then, to 
examine the evidence for the sacrifice of a human being 
as a cure for disease. 

We start off with a practice performed upon ani- 
mals, one animal in a herd being sacrificed for the herd. 

* See Folklore, i, 206. 



138 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

That this custom does not obtain among modern pas- 
toral tribes of savages shows that it is the first stage in 
our examination, because it suggests that the folk usage 
is not in its original form, and that probably from the 
fact of animals being represented therein something is 
symbolized by them which, if explained, would give us 
the original form.* Mr. Forbes Leslie, f and other 
authorities have collected some evidence together, and I 
rearrange it,, with further illustrations, in the following 
order. Within twenty miles of the metropolis of Scot- 
land a relative of Professor Simpson offered up a live 
cow as a sacrifice to the spirit of the murrain. J Sir 
Arthur Mitchell records another example in the county 
of Moray.* Grimm cites a remarkable case occurring 
in 1767 in the Island of Mull. In consequence of a dis- 
ease among the black cattle the people agreed to per- 
form an incantation, though they esteemed it a wdcked 
thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel 
and nine spindles of oak-wood. They extinguished 
every fire in every house within sight of the hill ; the 
wheel was then turned from east to west over the nine 
spindles long enough to produce fire by friction. If 
the fire was not produced before noon the incantation 

* The great cattle-rearing tribes, Kaffirs, Todas, and others, 
though they perform various significant ceremonies in connection 
with their herds, do not, so far as I have been able to discover, 
sacrifice one of the herd for the benefit of the remainder. 

f Early Races of Scotland, i, 84 et seq. 
X Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., iv, 33. 

* Ibid,, p. 200; Gordon Gumming, In the Hebrides, p. 194. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OP FOLKLORE. J 39 

lost its effect. They then sacrificed a heifer, cutting 
in pieces, and burning while yet alive, the diseased 
part. They then lighted their own hearths from the 
pile, and ended by feasting on the remains. Words of 
incantation were repeated by an old man from Morven, 
who continued speaking all the time the fire was being 
raised.* Keating speaks of the custom as a general 
one in Ireland, the chief object of the ceremony being 
to preserve the animals from contagious disorders for 
the year.f Dalyell notes from the Scottish Trials that 
a woman endeavored to repress the progress of the 
distemper among her cattle by taking a live ox, a cat, 
and a quantity of salt, and burying all together in 
a deep hole in the ground " as ane sacrifice to the 
devill." I 

In Wales, when a violent disease broke out among 
the horned cattle, the farmers of the district where it 
raged joined to give up a bullock for a victim, which 
was carried to the top of a precipice from whence it was 
thrown down. This was called " casting a captive to the 
devil." * In Scotland, and also Yorkshire, the sacrificed 
cow was buried beneath the threshold of the cattle- 
house. || In Northamptonshire the animal was burned 
for " good luck." A In Cornwall a calf was burned in 

* Grimm, Teut. Myth., p. 608. 

f Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland, i, 115. 
% Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, p. 186. 

* Beauties of England and Wales, 1812, xvii, i, 36. 

|| Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, p. 62 ; Guthrie, 
Old Scottish Custom*, p. 97. A Grimm, Teut. Myth, p. 610. 



140 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. 

1800 to arrest the murrain.* Dalycll alludes to " a 
recent expedient in the neighboring kingdom," prob- 
ably, therefore, the north of England, where a person 
having lost many of his herd, burned a living calf to 
preserve the remainder, f 

We pick out from these customs two details, namely, 
the death by fire and the casting down from the preci- 
pice, and note that they are forms of sacrifice specially 
applicable to human beings. The next link in the gene- 
alogy of these customs is supplied by the earlier exam- 
ples from Scotland. In 1643 John Brughe and Neane 
Nikclerith conjoined their mutual skill to save the herd 
from sickness, and they buried one alive " and maid all 
the rest of the cattell theiref tir to go over that place " ; { 
and in 1G29 the proprietor of some sheep in the Isle of 
Birsay was advised " to take ane beast at Alhallow evin 
and sprinkill thrie dropps of the bluid of it ben by the 
fyre."* 

In this last example the sacrifice is connected un- 
mistakably with the house — the domestic hearth. Ac- 
cordingly the next stage back seems to me to be the 
sacrifice of an animal, not for animal sickness, but for 
human sickness. This stage is actually represented in 
Scottish usage. The records of Dingwall on August 6, 

* Hone, Everyday Book, i, 431 ; Henderson, Folklore, p. 149; 
Hunt's Popular Romances of West of England, pp. 212-214. 

f Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 184. Professor 
Rhys tells me this also occurs in the Isle of Man. 
X Ii'id. p. 185. 

* Ibid., p. 1S4. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 141 

1678, note the proceedings taken against four of the 
Mackenzies " for sacrificing a bull in ane heathenish 
manner in the Island of St. Euffus, commonly called 
Elian Moury, in Lochew, for the recovery of the health 
of Cirstane Mackenzie." * Eeference to the same cere- 
mony is contained in the trial of Helene Isbuster in 
1635, where it is stated that Adam Lennard recovered 
from his sickness as the cows and oxen of another re- 
covered, f In an Irish example the interposition of a 
saint-deity does not hide the primitive practice. An 
image of wood about two feet high, carved and painted 
like a woman, was kept by one of the family of O'Her- 
lebys in Ballyvorney, County Cork, and when any one 
was sick of the small-pox they sent for it, sacrificed a 
sheep to it, and wrapped the skin about the sick person, 
and the family ate the sheep. J 

The stage of " animal for animal " is therefore pre- 
ceded by the stage of " animal for human being." The 
earliest stage of all, where human being is sacrificed for 
human being, is, if I mistake not, represented in the 
hideous practice, attested by Sir Arthur Mitchell, of 
epileptic patients tasting the blood of a murderer to be 
cured of their disease.* Here once more the murderer 
and the outcast are the objects of particularly revolting 
practices, which appear to have been transferred to 

* Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot, iv, 258. 
f Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, p. 182. 

% Richardson, The Great Folly Superstition, and Idolatry of 
Pilgrimages. * Past in the Present, p. 154. 



142 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

them during the development of more humane notions 
concerning one's fellow-creatures. But the final stage 
of the genealogy is more clearly represented than even 
this. Among the dismal records of witchcraft in 
Scotland toward the end of the sixteenth century there 
is unmistakable evidence of the sacrifice of one human 
being for another in cases of sickness. On July 22, 
1590, Hector Monro, seventeenth Baron of Fowlis, was 
tried " for sorcery, incantation, witchcraft, and slaugh- 
ter." It appears that in 1588, being sick, he sent for a 
notorious witch, who informed the Baron that he could 
not recover unless " the principal man of his bluid 
should die for him." George Monro, the Baron's half- 
brother, was selected as the victim. The witch and her 
accomplices one hour after midnight repaired to a spot 
near high-water mark where there was a boundary be- 
tween lands belonging to the king and the bishop. 
There, having first carefully removed the turf, they dug 
a grave long enough to contain the sick man, Hector 
Monro. Having placed him in the grave, they then 
covered him with the green turf, which they fastened 
with wands. The foster-mother of the Baron then ran 
the breadth of nine ridges, and on returning to the grave 
asked the witch " which was her choice." She answered 
that " Hector should live and his brother George die 
for him." This part of the ceremony being three times 
repeated, and from the commencement to the end of 
these rites no other words having been spoken, Hector 
was removed from the grave and conveyed back to hia 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 143 

bed. He recovered from his illness and his brother 
died.* 

There can be no doubt about such an example as 
this. " The alleged act of transferring disease or pain 
from one person to another," says Mr. Forbes Leslie, 
" and thus relieving the original sufferer, is one of the 
most common articles of accusation in the trials of 
witches. . . . That the transfer of maladies was only a 
modification of the tenet of sacrifice of one life being 
efficient for the saving of another appears from the 
explanation of Catherine Bigland, who was tried in 1615 
for having transferred a disease from herself to a man. 
Having heard the accusation, she exclaimed : " If Will- 
iam Bigland lived, she would die ; therefore God forbid 
he live." f 

The genealogy does not end here, for the practices 
of the Scottish witches exactly carry out the tenets of 
the Druids, who believed that the life of one man could 
only be redeemed by that of another. The Scottish 
witch did not get her creed and rites from the writings 
of Caesar and Pliny; she got them by descent from 
Druid practices which Caesar and Pliny witnessed or 
might have witnessed. 

In any society where human sacrifice was practiced 
for the cure of disease it may be surmised that not 
always could the rite be accomplished, and especially in 

* Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland, i, 79-82 ; Pitcairn's 
Criminal Trials, i, 191-204. 
f Forbes Leslie, op. cit., i, 83. 



144 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

cases where the patient was not rich and powerful. 
Probably only in cases of great chiefs was the rite 
regularly practiced. In other cases disease w r ould be 
transferred from the patient to a human victim in a less 
ostentatious manner, and this side of the case is also rep- 
resented in folklore. 

The Orkney islanders wash a sick person and then 
throw the water down at a gateway, in the charitable 
belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be 
transferred to the first person who passes through the 
gate.* Direct transfer, by the aid of warlocks or 
witches, was practiced in the Highlands, in which an 
enchanted yarn was placed over the door where the vic- 
tim was to pass.f At Inverkip, near Paisley, in 1694, 
nail-parings and hairs from the eye-lashes and crown of 
the head of the patient, also a small coin, were sewed up 
in a piece of cloth and so placed that the package might 
be picked up by some one, who would forthwith have 
the malady transferred to him. J 

The transfer of disease to animals seems to be the 
folklore substitution for the last group of examples. 
In the Highlands a cat was washed in the w r ater which 
had served for the ablution of the invalid, and was then 
set free.* 

* Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii, 226 ; cf. Dal yell, Darker 
Superstitions, p. 104. 

t Dalyell, op. ciL, pp. 106, 107. 

% Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii, 317. 

* Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, pp. 104, 105, 108. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 145 

Finally the transference of disease from one animal 
to another also appears in this group. In Caithness 
Dalyell records a case of transporting a portion of the 
diseased animal from the owner's house to the dwelling 
of another, whose cattle sickened and died, while those 
of the former recovered.* 

Thus the sacrifice of a human being for the cure of 
disease has been traced dow r n through all stages of its 
survival. It is a good example of what I have termed 
" substitution " in folklore, and is remarkable because it 
is not only the victim for whom a substitute is found, 
but the complete rite, originally under the Druidic cult 
appertaining to man, and, so far as we know or are war- 
ranted in conjecturing, only to man, is found in folklore 
appertaining to animals. Other remedies having been 
discovered for the cure of disease among men, or an in- 
trusive race of people having introduced other remedies, 
the older cult is perpetuated by another medium. It is 
oftener the case than is generally supposed that rites 
once incidental to human society are transferred under 
new influences to cattle instead of being entirely abol- 
ished, and if this characteristic of folklore be constantly 
kept in mind while examining animal folklore better 
results will be arrived at than by interpreting it by all 
sorts of mythic fancy out of keeping with the standards 
of primitive culture. 

4. Henderson says that the moss-troopers of the 

* Dalyell, op. cit., pp. 108. 109. 



146 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

borders made the saining torch for a funeral from the 
fat of a slaughtered enemy, or at least of a murdered 
man.* 

I take it that this diabolical practice indicates an 
attitude toward one's enemies which at once suggests 
that the region of savagery can alone explain it. In the 
mean time it is to be observed that but for this record 
the transitional stage from "enemy" to a "murdered 
man " would hardly have been perceived, and I note 
this as another instance where the attitude of the peas- 
antry to the murdered and their slayers often repre- 
sents a much older feeling existing among members of a 
clan or tribe for strangers that are enemies. Before 
trying to interpret what this feeling may be, I will see 
what there is in tradition and custom in extension of 
the fact recorded by Henderson. The isolated note, clear 
as it is as the record of a practice that is not civilized, 
does not tell much of its history, which may, how- 
ever, be recovered by noting other facts connected with 
the treatment of enemies. If from the mere atrocities 
of warfare there may be traced the theory of savage 
life which underlies certain specific acts, we may, by 
means of this theory, trace out the connection between 
the border custom and the practices of savages. 

Modern times supply evidence of savage practice 
toward an enemy which help to explain the place in 
folklore of the moss-troopers' saining torch. In the 

* Folklore of Northern Counties, p. 54 ; cf. p. 239 of the same 
volume. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF F0LKL0K2. 147 

reign of James VI of Scotland the MacDonalds killed 
the chief of the clan Drummond of Drummondernoch 
and cut off his head ; and the king's proclamation de- 
scribes how they carried the head to " the Laird of 
McGregor, who, and his haill surname of McGregors 
purposely conveined at the kirk of Buchquhidder, qr 
they caused ye said umqll John's head to be pnted to 
them, and yr avowing ye sd murder, laid yr hands upon 
the pow and in Ethnic and barbarous manner swear to 
defend ye authors of ye sd murder." * That this swear- 
ing upon the skull was not the single barbarous act of a 
particular clan without the sanction of custom is, I 
think, shown by the superstition, said to be very com- 
mon in Mayo, Ireland, of swearing upon a skull, in order 
to get which persons have dug up a corpse recently 
buried and cut off its head.f 

Many barbarities are related in the legendary his- 
tories of Irish warriors. There seems to be evidence 
of an habitual savagery in the following details which 
goes far to explain the short but explicit account of 
Border war customs. The Irish warrior when he killed 
his enemy broke his skull, extracted his brains, mixed 
up the mass well, and working the compound into a ball 
he carefully dried it in the sun, and afterward produced 
it as a trophy of former valor and a presage of future 
victory. " Take out its brain therefrom," was ConalPs 
speech to the gillie who declared he could not carry 
Mesgegra's head, " and ply a sword upon it, and bear the 

* N. & Q., v, 547. t & & <?•> y > 485. 



148 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

brain with thee, and mix lime therewith and make a 
ball thereof." These trophies are described as being the 
object of pride and contention among the chiefs, and 
Mesgegra's brain, being captured by Get from Conall, 
was hurled at Conchobar and caused his death.* 

Then we have the practice recorded of cutting off 
the point of the tongue of every man they slew, and 
bringing it in their pouch, f Carrying the heads of the 
slain at their girdle, first noted both by Strabo and 
Diodorus Siculus, is clearly implied in the saga, which 
Mr. Whitley Stokes has translated from a twelfth -cent- 
ury copy, called the " Siege of Howth." J An episode 
incorporated in the story of Kulhwch in the " Mabino- 
gion " discloses, says Professor Rhys, " a vista of ancient 
savagery," from which I may quote the passage which 
describes how Gwyn " killed Nwython, took out his 
heart, and forced Kyledr to eat his father's heart; it 
was therefore Kyledr became wild and left the abodes 

* Otway, Sketches in Erris and Tyrawly, p. 17 ; O'Curry, MS. 
Materials for Irish Hist., pp. 270, 275, 640 ; Manners and Customs 
of Anc. Irish, ii, 107, 290 ; Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 136 ; Rev. 
Celt, viii, 63. Mr. Whitley Stokes says the heroes of this story 
" are said to have lived in the first century of the Christian era, 
and the possible incidents of the saga are such as may well have 
taken place at that period of heroic barbarism." 

f Whitley Stokes, in Revue Celtique, i, 261 ; v, 232. Cf Will- 
iam of Newbury for the story of a Galloway chieftain who took 
captive a cousin of Henry II, plucked out his eyes " et testiculos 
et linguam absciderunt." — G. Nubrigensis, p. 281. 

X Strabo, iv, 302 ; Diod. Sic, v, 29 ; Rev. Celt., viii, 59. Another 
story cited by Rhys (Celtic Heathendom, p. 513) affords the same 
evidence. It is possible that the curious instances of magic skulls 



TIIE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 149 

of men." * Giraldus Cambrensis mentions that in 
Fitzstephen's time the Irish foot-soldiers collected about 
two hundred of the enemies' heads and laid them at 
the feet of Dermitius, Prince of Leinster. "Among 
them was the head of one he mortally hated above all 
the rest, and taking it up by the ears and hair he tore 
the nostrils and lips with his teeth in a most savage 
and inhuman manner." f 

Even among the moss-troopers themselves, whose 
customs we are trying to elucidate, there are instances 
both in history and tradition of their having eaten the 
flesh and drank the blood of their enemies, and a cer- 
tain Lord Soulis was boiled alive, the perpetrators of 
the murder afterward drinking the water. J 

There is at least one passage in early MS. his- 
tories which attributes to the Irish goddess of battles 
the dedication of human heads. A gloss in the ' Lebor 
Buidhe Lecain," says Professor Whitley Stokes, explains 
MachcB thus — " the scald crow ; or she is the third 
Morrigau (great queen) ; Macha's fruit crop — i. e., the 
heads of men that have been slaughtered."* Taking 

preserved in some ancient houses in England may be derived from 
these savage practices. 

* Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 561. 
f Conquest of Ireland, lib. i, cap. iv. 

% Denham Tracts (Folklore Society), i, 155. 

# Rev, Celt., i, 36; Stokes, Three Irish Glossaries, p. xxxv. In 
the story of Echtra Nerai is the following confirmatory allusion : 
" The dun was burned before him, and he beheld a heap of heads 
of their people cut off by the warriors from the dun." Rev. Celt., 
x, 217. 



150 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

this in connection with the early practices of the Irish 
as recorded by classical authorities, and the practices so 
frequently ascribed to Irish heroes in legends and tradi- 
tions and in early MS. accounts,* the meaning and sig- 
nificance seems clear enough, although I have not been 
able to discover that Irish scholars have so interpreted 
it. The story of Bran's head being cut off by the seven 
survivors of his army and taken with them to their own 
country, where they preserved it and feasted with it, is 
still more to the point in illustration of savage custom 
rather than of mythic thought,! while the story of 
Lomna's head struck off and stuck upon a pike w r hile 
his slayers cooked their food goes still further in the 
same direction, because of the implied custom con- 
nected with the plot of the story of placing some food 
in the mouth of the dead man's head. J 

If, then, the heads of the slain were dedicated to the 
goddess of battle they would be placed in her temple. 
With this preliminary evidence before us I want to 
pass on to an archaeological fact of some significance. 
When Malcolm II of Scotland defeated the Danes, he, 
in fulfillment of a vow, built the church of St. Mort- 
lach or Moloch at Keith, and built into the walls of 

f Thus Cuculain's head was taken by Ere MacCairpre in re- 
taliation for his father's head (Rev. Celt., i, p. 51 ; iii, 182). Conall 
the Victorious cut off Lugaid's head (Rev. Celt., iii, 184). Cormac's 
death and decapitation are given in Whitley Stokes's Three Irish 
Glossaries, p. xi. 

f Rhys, op. cit., p. 96. 

% Rhys, op. cit., p. 09 ; Stokes, Three Irish Glossaries, p. xlvii. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 151 

the sacred edifice the heads of those slain in the bat- 
tle.* In the Isle of Egg, Martin discovered a burial-place 
filled with human bones ; but no heads were found, 
and the natives supposed that their heads were cut 
off " and taken away by the enemy." f So in the 
interments of the Long Barrow period headless trunks 
are frequently met with, as are also heads buried 
separately. J 

Simeon of Durham relates that when Duncan, King 
of Scots, besieged Durham and was defeated, the be- 
sieged killed all his foot-soldiers and cut off their 
heads, piling them up in the market-place. # 

Fortunately some of the practices which mark the 
savagery of early Britain are distinctive and clear. 
Beyond the general features which perhaps it might be 
difficult to exactly classify in the development of cult- 
ure are certain special features which may be classified 
with some degree of certainty. People who ate their 
deceased relatives, collected the heads and drank the 
blood of their enemies, tattooed themselves with repre- 
sentations of animals, sacrificed human beings, and 
indulged in orgiastic rites at the altars of fetichistic 
gods, are within the pale of ethnographic research. At 
once we seek for the causes of these wild doings. The 
people who acted in this way did so in obedience to 
some theory of life which made all their hideous prac- 
tices good, or at all events necessary, in their eyes and 

* Antiquary, vi, 77. + Martin, Western Islands, p. 278. 
X Journ. Anthrop, List, v, 146, 147. ** Cap. 33. 

11 



152 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

in the eyes of their fellows ; and if we would know more 
about the people who have yielded up their scraps of 
savage custom to the modern inquirer we must ascertain 
what their theory of life was. This will not be found in 
the pages of Strabo and Caesar and Pliny, or the other 
authorities who have been adduced in evidence ; but it 
must be sought for in the history of modern savagedom, 
where practices which startled and horrified the early 
observers still exist, and in the hands of the scientific 
analyst yield up truths concerning human life which 
overshadow^ feelings of horror. Even the practices per- 
formed during the maddening events of war and re- 
venge are the result to some degree of a primitive the- 
ory of life which necessitates their performance, and I 
shall therefore endeavor to trace out from modern sav- 
agery what it was that taught early man to revel in the 
acts which have just been described from the evidence 
of folklore. 

The savage treatment of enemies, represented by the 
practices of head-hunting and of drinking their blood 
and besmearing with it their own faces, belong to that 
widespread primitive idea that, by eating the flesh, or 
some particular portion of the body which is recognized 
as the seat of power, or by drinking the blood of another 
human being, a man absorbs the nature or the life of 
the deceased into his own. 

After the Italians of the island of Lucjon have killed 
an enemy, they drink his blood and devour the lungs 
and back part of the brain, etc., believing that this hor- 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 153 

rible mess gives them spirit and courage in war. * The 
Nukahivahs cut off the heads of their slain enemies 
and drank the blood and ate a part of the brain on the 
spot.f Many of the Maoris quaffed the blood of the 
slain as the essence of life and the source of human 
activity, and they generally severed the head from the 
body and preserved it as a trophy. J Gallego mentions, 
in 1566, that a body of five white men and five negroes, 
having landed on one of the islands of the Solomon 
group, were set upon by the native Indians and mas- 
sacred, except one negro. " All the rest they hewed to 
pieces, cutting off their heads, arms, and legs, tearing 
out their tongues and supping up their brains with great 
ferocity. # Among the Lhoosai of India it is customary 
for a young warrior to eat a piece of the liver of the first 
man he kills, which it is said strengthens the heart and 
gives courage. || Among the natives of Victoria there is 
a strong belief in the virtues communicated by rubbing 
the body with the fat of a dead man, it being thought 
that his strength and courage will be acquired by those 
who perform the ceremonies. A 

The New Ireland cannibals of the present day are 
fond of a composition of sago, cocoa-nut, and human 

* Featherman's Social History, 2d div., 501. 
f Ibid., Oceano-Melanesians, p. 91. 

% Ibid., 204, 205. 

* Guppy's Solomon Islands, p. 225. 

I Lewin's Wild Races of S.-E. India, p. 269. 
A Smythe, Aborigines of Victoria, i, xxix ; for cutting off the 
head of their enemies, see ibid., i, 161, 165. 



154 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

brains.* The blood revenge of the Garos of India is 
marked by a practice very little in advance of this. 
Upon a quarrel ensuing, " both parties immediately plant 
a tree bearing a sour fruit, and make a solemn vow that 
they will avail themselves of the earliest opportunity 
that offers to eat its fruit with the juice of their antago- 
nist's head. The party who eventually succeeds in 
revenging himself upon his antagonist cuts off his head, 
summons his friends, with whom he boils the head along 
with the fruit of the tree, and portions out the mixed 
juice to them, and drinks of it himself. The tree is 
then cut down and the feud is at an end."f 

Among the Ashantees, one of the Tshi-speaking 
peoples of Africa, several of the hearts of the enemy are 
cut out by the fetichmen who follow the army, and the 
blood and small pieces being mixed (with much cere- 
mony and incantation) with various consecrated herbs, 
all those who have never killed an enemy before eat a por- 
tion, for it is believed thatif they did not their vigor and 
courage would be secretly wasted by the haunting spirit 
of the deceased. It is said that the King and all the 
dignitaries partook of the heart of any celebrated enemy, 
and they wore the smaller joints, bones, and teeth of the 
slain monarchs. Beecham says the heart was eaten by 
the chiefs, and the flesh " having been dried, was divided, 
together with his bones, among the men of consequence 
in the army, who kept their respective shares about 

* Romilly, Western Pacific, p. 58. 
t Jouni. Anthrop. Inst., ii, o9C. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 155 

their persons as charms to inspire them with cour- 
age." * 

The preservation of the heads of fallen enemies as 
house trophies is found among many of the tribes already 
mentioned for other evidence. The Battahs of Sumatra 
use the roof space of the village house for preserving 
the sacred relics of the community, and there are to 
be found the skulls of enemies slain in battle, f The 
Montescos and Italones keep the skulls of enemies in 
their houses as trophies ; J so did the Maories. # The 
Solomon islanders set up a pair of the skulls of their 
enemies upon a post when they launch their canoe, and 
the canoe-houses are adorned with rows of them. || Some 
of the aboriginal tribes of India follow this practice. 
Thus the Lhoosai, or Kookies, carry away the heads of 
the slain in leather sacks, and are careful, if possible, to 
keep their hands unwashed and bloody, and as soon as 
the conquerors reach their village they assemble before 
the chief's house and make a pyramid of the heads they 
have taken; the principal men of the tribe fix their 
enemies heads on bamboo poles, which they place on 

*Bowditch, Mission to Ashantee, p. 800; Ellis, Tshi-spealcing 
Peoples, p. 266 ; Beecham's Ashantee, p. 76. " The hearts [of the 
messengers] were reported to have been devoured by the BraHoes 
while yet palpitating." — Ibid., p. 11. 

f Featherman, Malayo-Melanesians, pp. 318, 335. 

% Ibid., p. 502 ; Morga, Philippine Islands, Wh cent. Hakluyt, 
p. 272. 

# Featherman, Oceano-Melanesians, p. 204. 

[ Woodford, Naturalist among the Head Hunters, pp. 92, 152; 
Guppy, Solomon Islands, p. 16. 



156 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

the tombs of their ancestors.* What strikes the stranger 
most, says an eyewitness, on entering a chief's residence 
among the Naga hill-tribes is the collection of skulls, both 
human and of the field, slung round the walls inside ; 
here repose heads of chieftains slain in battle, or per- 
haps treacherously killed for some wrong, real or imag- 
inary, done to their successful enemy, f The Samoans 
" were ambitious to signalize themselves by the number 
of heads they could lay before the chiefs." These heads 
were piled up in a heap in the malae or public assembly, 
the head of the most important chief being put at the 
top. J The Tshi-speaking tribes of Africa collect the 
jawbones of their slain enemies, and preserve them by 
being dried and smoked, the heads of any hostile chiefs 
who may have fallen being preserved entire, and carried 
separately as trophies of victory.* 

From this view of savage practices toward enemies 
it is clear that something more than mere cruelty is 
contained in them, and perhaps we may now venture 



* Lewin's Wild Racers of S.~E. India, pp. 266, 279 ; Asiatic Re- 
searches, vii, 188; Woodthorpe. Lushai Expedition, p. 136: "The 
Lushai have a superstition that if the head of a man slain in battle 
falls into the hands of his enemy, the man becomes the slave of the 
victor in the next world." — Journ. Ind. Arch., ii, 233. 

t Owen's Naga Tribes (Calcutta, 1844), p. 12; Hunter, Stat 
Account of Assam, ii, 384 ; Journ. Anthrop. Inst., iii, 477; Journ. 
Ind. Arch., ii, 233. 

X Turner's Samoa, p. 193 ; Wilkes, United States Explor. 
Exped., ii, 139. 

* Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, pp. 266, 267; Beecham, Ashan- 
tee, pp. 81, 211. 



THE ETIIXIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 157 

upon an explanation of the saining torch, made from the 
fat of a slaughtered enemy, with a description of which 
this section began. Among savages the fat of an 
enemy is of value to the living. A very slight exten- 
sion of this idea shows that it may be of service to the 
dead. It appears that the saining candle must be kept 
burning throughout the night, and it seems that the 
reason for this may well be in order to aid the soul of 
the dead by means of a light to its last resting-place in 
ghost land. In the candle which is thus used, made of 
the fat of a slaughtered enemy who has already had to 
travel the same course, may be traced that curious idea 
embodied in the Australian belief that the strength of 
a slain enemy enters into his slayer when he rubs him- 
self with the fat. In the English border custom the 
strength of the dead enemy is used to light the depart- 
ing soul of the slayer to its rest, and the light from an 
enemy's strength already in ghost land would be a 
surer guide than any other light. Such is the explana- 
tion which the savage evidence seems to me to yield 
concerning the folklore evidence, and the genealogy of 
this item of folklore is very short, there being but 
one link between it and savagery. The question is — Is 
it Aryan or non-Aryan ? 

AYe can only answer this by endeavoring to find 
out whether the primitive Aryan possessed that hideous 
belief which taught the warrior to consume or keep 
as trophies portions of his enemy's dead body because 
they would make him possessed of his enemy's good 



158 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

qualities, or because they effectually secured him from 
injury by the spirit of his dead enemy. The science 
of language is silent on the point, though the refined 
custom of guest-friendship revealed to us by language * 
points to some higher conceptions. Comparative cus- 
tom, too, seems to suggest that the trophy of the 
savage, afraid of his dead enemy's spirit, had become 
in the higher development of culture the trophy of 
the gallent warrior who exhibited it simply as proof 
of his own valor, f and comparative belief yields the 
singularly expressive example recorded by Grimm 
that "a dying man's heart could pass into a liv- 
ing man, who would then show tw T ice as much 
pluck." % 

With these preliminary suggestions in hand let us 
turn to folklore. The traditions of the Indian Aryans 
preserve a recollection of a hostile class of beings, who 
go about open-mouthed and sniffing after human flesh, 
and who carry off their human prey and tear open the 
living bodies, and with their faces plunged among the 
entrails suck up the warm blood as it gushes from the 
heart.* The traditions of the Celtic Aryans are much 

* Schrader, op cit, p. 351. 

t Spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, pp. 36-49 ; the shields em- 
bellished with emblematic designs expressive of the exploits of 
their owners adorned the walls of the Scandinavian houses.— Mal- 
let, Northern Antiq., i, 241. 

X Grimm, Teut. Myth., iv, 1548. 

* Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, pp. 312-313 ; Temple's 
Wide-awake Stories, p. 395. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 159 

the same. A hostile race of giants, having their sense 
of smell for human flesh peculiarly sharp, ate their 
captives and reveled in their biood. The " Fee-f o-fum " 
of Cornwall is " Fiaw-fiaw-f oaghrich " in Argyll, and 
these sounds, says Mr. Campbell, may possibly be cor- 
ruptions of the language of real big burly savages now 
magnified into giants.* 

Unfortunately the mycologists have appropriated 
the parallel tradition of India. They interpret it as 
a storm-myth of the primitive Aryans. But mycolo- 
gists have to deal with the analysis of the giant world 
by Mr. J. F. Campbell, to take count of the facts that 
the giants were not so big but that their conquerors 
wore their clothes, not so strong that men could not beat 
them even by wrestling, and that their magic arts were 
always in the end beaten by men ; and to contest the 
sound conclusion from these facts, that the " giants are 
simply the nearest savage race at war with the race 
who tell the tales." f The nearest savage races in India 
are those hill-tribes who, like the Lhoosai, teach their 
young warriors to eat a piece of the liver of the first 
man he kills in order to strengthen his heart, and to 
carry away the heads of the slain, being careful to keep 
their hands unwashed and bloody ; the Nagas, who 
adorn their houses with the heads of their enemies; 
or the Gar os, who plant a tree and avail themselves of 
the earliest opportunity that offers to eat its fruit with 

* Highland Tales, i, xcviii. 

f Campbell's Tales of West Highlands, i, xcix. 



100 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

the juice of their antagonist's head.* The nearest 
savage races in Celtic Britain would have been those 
tribes of Ireland who, as Solinus informs us, drank the 
blood of their fallen enemies and then smeared their 
faces therewith, and those tribes of Britain who, on the 
authority of Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, took their 
enemies' heads, and slinging them at their saddle-bow, 
carried them home and nailed them to the porch of their 
houses f — non- Aryans, in point of fact, as they are in 
India, who have left a remnant of their practices among 
the Borderers of England and Scotland. 

5. In Yorkshire the country people call the night- 
flying white moths " souls." J If we ask whether this is 
merely a pretty poetical fancy, the further question 
must be put whether such poetry is not founded upon 
undying traditional beliefs, w r hich have a genealogy 
of ethnical value. Grimm, at all events, supports such 
a view from an examination of kindred Teutonic 
beliefs,* and when put to the test I think the root 
of the conception in English folklore may be traced 
back to its home. 

Between the butterfly and the moth there is, per- 
haps, not much to distinguish from the point of view of 
poetical fancy. In the parish of Ballymoyer in Ireland 

* It is not uninteresting to note that the planting of a tree 
when the hero starts on his fighting expeditions, is an incident in 
folk tales which bears very curiously on the Garo custom. 

f Strabo, iv, 302 ; Diod. Sic, v, 29. 

+ Choice Notes, Folklore, p. 61. 

« Teat. Myth., ii, 826. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 161 

butterflies "are said to be the souls of your grand- 
father."* But poetical fancy dies away as we find out 
that the same conception is found in different places at- 
tached to birds and to animals. An example occurs in 
London, in which a sparrow was believed to be the soul 
of a deceased person, f In County Mayo it is believed that 
the souls of virgins remarkable for the purity of their 
lives were after death enshrined in the form of swans.} 
In Devonshire there is the well-known case of the Oxen- 
ham family, whose souls at death are supposed to enter 
into a bird;* while in Cornwall it is believed that 
King Arthur is still living in the form of a raven. || In 
Xidderdale the country people say that the souls of un- 
baptized infants are embodied in the nightjar. A 

The most conspicuous example of souls taking the 
form of animals is that of the Cornish fisherfolk, who 
believe that they can sometimes see their drowning 
comrades take that shape. Q In the Hebrides, when a 
man is slowly lingering away in consumption, the 
fairies are said to be on the watch to steal his soul that 

* Mason's, Stat Ace. of Ireland, ii, 83 ; Hall's Ireland, i, 394 ; 
N. & £., 5th ser., vii, 284. 

f Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Folklore, pp. 104, 105. 

% Swainson, Folklore of Birds, p. 152. In Irish mythic belief 
the souls of the righteous were supposed to appear as doves. — Rev, 
Celt, ii, 200. 

* Howell's Familiar Epistles, July 3, 1632 ; Chambers, Booh 
of Days, ii, 731 ; Gent Mag., 1862. i, 481-483. 

I Notes and Queries, 1st ser., viii, 618. 
A Swainson, op. cit, p. 98. 
Q Folklore Journal, v, 189. 



1G2 " ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

they may therewith give life to some other body.* In 
Lancashire some one received into his mouth the last 
breath of a dying person, fancying that the soul passed 
out with it into his own body.)- 

These examples, I believe, represent the last link in 
the genealogy of the doctrine of metempsychosis, as it 
has survived in folklore. Poetry may have kept alive 
the idea of a butterfly or moth embodying the soul, but 
it did not create the idea, because it is shown to extend 
to other creatures not so adaptable to poetic fancy. 
When we come upon the Lincolnshire belief that " the 
soul of a sleeping comrade had temporarily taken up 
his abode in a bee," J we are too near the doctrine of 
savages for there to be any doubt as to where the first 
links of the genealogy start from. There is scarcely 
any need to draw attention to its non- Christian char- 
acter, except that folklore has preserved in the Nidder- 
dale example evidence of the arresting hand which 
Christianity put upon these beliefs. There is, however, 
something older than Christianity as an arresting 
power, and I go back to the Hebridean example to 
prove that it was at the instance of inimical fairies that 
the souls w r ere made to transmigrate into other bodies. 
Miss Gordon Cumming, w r ho records this belief, describes 
a significant ceremony for preventing the fairies from 
accomplishing their theft. The old wives, she says, 

* Gordon Cumming, Hebrides, p. 267. 

f Harlan d and Wilkinson, Lane. Folklore, p. 8. 

X N. & Q. t ii, 506 ; iii, 206. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 103 

" cut the nails of the sufferer that they may tie up the 
parings in a bit of rag, and wave this precious charm 
thrice round his head deisul." Here we have an un- 
doubted offering of a part of the body in place of the 
whole which is so frequently met with in primitive wor- 
ship,* and if my interpretation of fairy beliefs is correct, 
it is an offering to non-Aryan spirits. In this connec- 
tion it is important to bear in mind that the transmi- 
gration of the soul into another body is held by the 
Hebrideans to be the work of hostile powers, and in 
this as in other branches of the fairy cult I believe we 
have in folklore the lingering traditions of the in- 
fluence of non- Aryan people upon their Aryan con- 
querors. 

These conclusions, drawn from the facts as they stand 
in the genealogy of this group of folklore, are confirmed 
by the conclusions arrived at by the science of culture 
with reference to metempsychosis. This is held to be- 
long to that " lower psychology " which draws no defi- 
nite line between souls of men and of beasts, and which 
is illustrated only by examples obtained from savage 
races, f In its crude state it was, according to Dr. 
Tylor, " seemingly not received by the early Aryans." J 
It is no part of the creed of the European Aryans, and 

* Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, lect. ix ; 
Frazer, Golden Bough, i, 198 et seq. 

f Dr. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 6, 7, has collected these 
together. 

X Tylor, loc. cit. ; and see Monier Williams, Indian Wisdcm, 
p. C8. 



164 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

when it is found in the higher levels of culture the 
theory of re-embodiment of the soul " appears in stroug 
and varied development." All later research by Gruppe 
and other authorities does not appear to shake this 
opinion by denying to the Aryans a belief in the future 
existence of the soul. It confirms the hypothesis that I 
advance — namely, that in the evidence of metempsy- 
chosis derived from its survivals in folklore there is no 
development beyond savagery; there is no mark of it 
ever having been adopted and adapted by a people higher 
than savages ; and that therefore its state of arrested de- 
velopment must have been produced by the incoming 
Aryans. 

6. The examples of folklore whose ethnic genealogy 
I have hitherto attempted to trace all bear upon the 
relationship of man to man, and it is worth stating that 
a full consideration of the whole group and its allied 
items would throw much additional light upon the 
question of their non-Aryan origin. It is important, 
however, that I should now give some examples of folk- 
lore illustrative of the relationship of man to other 
objects. In the selection of specimens it is difficult 
altogether to escape classifying them into the sections 
which are supplied from a study of the ways and methods 
of thought of primitive man, but this can not properly be 
accomplished until the biography of each item of folk- 
lore is worked out, just as the biography of words is 
being worked out. Then, and not till then, can we 
count up not only what elements of primitive fancy and 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 165 

thought are represented in modern folklore, but what 
elements are not represented. And then only can we 
attempt to account for the lacunae, and see whether the 
stream of Aryan civilization has rilled them up. 

In Ireland, " on the last night of the year a cake is 
thrown against the outside door of each house by the 
head of the family for the purpose of keeping out 
hunger during the ensuing year."* The significant 
points to note about this custom are the position of the 
head of the family as the priest for the occasion, and the 
outside door of the house as the place of the ceremony. 
The other tw T o elements — namely, the use of a cake and 
the purpose of the ceremony to keep out hunger — are 
the substitutions for some older elements which have 
arisen by decay. The next link in the genealogy is also 
supplied from Irish folklore. At St. Peter's, Athlone, 
every family of a village on St. Martin's Day kills an 
animal of some kind or other ; those who are rich kill a 
cow or sheep, others a goose or turkey, while those w T ho 
are poor kill a hen or cock ; with the blood of the ani- 
mal they sprinkle the threshold and also the four cor- 
ners of the house, and "this performance is done to 
exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling 
where the sacrifice is made till the return of the same 
day the following year.f 

* Croker's Researches in South of Ireland, p. 233. 

t Mason's Statistical Account of Ireland, iii, 75. " Some ani- 
mal must be killed on St. Martin's day because blood must be 
shed," is the general formula of Irish folklore. — Folklore Record, 
iv, 107; Dalyell, Darker Superstitio?is,' p. 191. 



166 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

Undoubtedly we are here taken back by the aid of 
but two links to that primitive ceremonial for the 
expulsion of evils which forms a part of Mr. Frazer's 
examination into early ritual. Almost all the examples 
— all the really perfect examples — he adduces are of 
savage origin, and " the frame of mind which prompts 
such wholesale clearance of evils " is also only capable 
of illustration from savagery. Mr. Im Thurn supplies 
from Guiana the needful evidence.* But the closest 
parallel to the Irish example is to be found among the 
ancient Peruvians. There is no need to describe the 
curious ceremonies at any length. For my purpose the 
most significant part of the ceremony is the prepara- 
tion of a coarse paste of maize and the use to which it 
was put. Some of the paste was kneaded with the blood 
of children between five and ten years of age, the blood 
being obtained from between the eyebrows. Each 
family assembled at the house of the eldest brother 
to celebrate the feast. After rubbing their head, face, 
breast, shoulders, arms and legs with a little of the 
blood-kneaded paste, the head of the family anointed 
the threshold with the same paste, and left it there as 
a token that the inmates of the house had performed 
their ablutions, f 

It is not possible to connect this kind of ritual with 
any known Aryan custom, and its dependence upon the 

* Quoted by Frazer, Golden Bought ii, 157 et seq, 
f Hakluyt, Eights and Laws of the Yncas, p. 24 ; Frazer, 
Golden Bough, ii, 167, 108. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 167 

primitive doctrine of the swarming of the whole world 
with spiritual beings hurtful to man, and the resulting 
doctrine of fear as the guide of religious life, absolutely 
forbids such a connection. 

7. It has already been pointed out that sacred stones 
have a definite place in the non- Aryan religions of the 
world, but very little has been done to classify the sacred 
stones of European peoples according to the beliefs still 
surviving as folklore.* I shall now attempt to trace out 
the genealogy of this important group of folklore in 
Britain. We must consider, first, those cases where 
stones are supposed to be possessed of some magic 
powers, the exercise of which is not accompanied by 
any special ceremony ; secondly, those cases where the 
ritual observed to put these powers into operation is of 
such a character as to indicate the nature of the wor- 
ship paid to these stone divinities. 

On the altar of the church called Kil-chattan, on 
the Isle of Gigha, is a "font of stone which is very 
large and hath a small hole in the middle which goes 
quite through it." f A black stone was formerly pre- 
served in the cathedral of Iona, and it was held in such 
reverence that on it solemn oaths were sworn and agree- 
ments ratified. A similar stone in the Hebrides was 

* Miss Gordon Gumming suggests very forcibly that the 360 
stone crosses of Iona are probably the descendants of prehistoric 
monoliths similar to those in use by the non-Aryans of India. 
— In the Hebrides, pp. 65-67. 

t Martin, p. 228. 
12 



1G8 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

supposed to be oracular and to answer whatever questions 
might be asked. It lay on the sea-shore, and the people 
never approached it without certain solemnities. On 
the altar of St. Fladda's Chapel, in the island of Flad- 
dahnan, lies a round bluish stone which was always 
moist ; should fishermen be detained here by contrary 
winds they first walk sunwise round the chapel, then 
poured water on this stone, and a favorable breeze would 
certainly spring up ; the stone likewise cured diseases 
and the people swore solemn oaths by it. A similar 
stone was in the Isle of Arran, of a green color, and 
the size of a goose's egg ; it was known as the stone of 
St. Molingus and was kept in the custody of the Clan 
Chattan ; the popular belief was that it not only cured 
disease, but that if it were thrown at an advancing foe 
they would be terror-stricken and retreat, and it was also 
a solemn thing to swear by. It was in the custody of a 
woman, and was preserved " wrapped up in fair linen 
cloth, and about that there is a piece of woolen cloth." * 
In the island of North Eonaldsay there is a large 
stone about nine or ten feet high and four broad, placed 
upright in a plain, but no tradition is preserved con- 
cerning it. On New Year's Day the inhabitants assem- 
bled there and danced by the moonlight with no other 
music than their own singing. f In Benbecula, "the 
vulgar retain the custom of making a religious tour 

* Gordon dimming, op. cit., pp. 70, 167; Martin's Western Isl- 
ands, pp. 166, 226. 

f Sinclair's Stat. Ace. of Scotland, vii, 480. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. ±QQ 

round " several big kairnes of stones on the east side of 
the island on Sundays and holidays.* The same is 
recorded of the islands of Kismul, Skye, Jura, and 
Egg-t 

Several important facts need to be tabulated at this 
stage of the genealogy. They are — 

(1) The pouring of water on the stone to produce a 
favorable breeze ; 

(2) The wrapping up of the stone in cloth ; 

(3) The custody of the stone by a special clan ; 

all of which indicate features of a special cult, over and 
above that which may be gathered from the acts of rev- 
erence and processions, which occur more generally. 
In the case of well worship, it will be remembered that 
the obtaining of favorable winds was one of the inter- 
mediary forms between the more general acts of rev- 
erence and worship and the identification of the well as 
the dwelling-place of the rain-god. In like manner 
with stones the same links in the genealogy are dis- 
coverable. 

Thus in Scotland, in the seventeenth century, a 
tempest was raised by dipping a rag in water and 
theft beating it on a stone thrice in the name of Satan. 

I knok this rag wpone this stane 

To raise the wind in the divellis name 

It sail not lye till I please againe. 

Drying the rag, along with another conjuration, ap- 

*Martin, Western Islands, p. 85. 

f Martin, op. cit, pp. 97, 152, 241, 277. 



170 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

peased the storm.* In the isle of Uist the inhabitants 
erected the " water-cross," a stone in the form of a cross, 
opposite to St. Mary's church, for procuring rain, and 
when enough had fallen they replaced it flat on the 

ground, f 

These examples carry on the identification of stones 
as representatives of the rain-god, and the rag cere- 
monial mentioned by Dalyell may without much diffi- 
culty be considered as the representative of the wrappage 
in the Arran example. But by far the most significant 
of these beliefs is to be found in an island off the coast 
of Ireland, and I shall describe this in full, as it has been 
put on record by an eyewitness, though perhaps not a 
too favorable one. 

About seven miles distant from Bingham Castle, in 
the Atlantic, is the island of Inniskea, containing about 
300 inhabitants. They have very little intercourse with 
the mainland. A stone carefully wrapped up in flannel 
is brought out at certain periods to be adored by the 
inhabitants. When a storm arises this god is suppli- 
cated to send a wreck upon their coast. The stone is in 
the south island, in the house of a man named Monigan, 

* Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 248. 

t Martin's Western Islands, p. 59. I am tempted to suggest 
that the odd custom, recorded by Roberts in Old English Customs 
and Charities, p. 100, of washing a stone figure known as " Molly 
Grime" in Glentham church with water from Newell well, be- 
longs to this group of customs, especially as it has its parallel in 
the washing of the wooden figure of St. Fumac with water from 
the sacred well at Botriphnie near Keith. — Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., 
xvii, 191. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 171 

and is called in the Irish Neevougi. In appearance it 
resembles a thick roll of homespun flannel, which arises 
from the custom of dedicating a dress of that material 
to it whenever its aid is sought. This is sewed on by an 
old woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it is. Its 
power is believed to be immense. They pray to it in 
time of sickness, it is invoked when a storm is desired 
to dash some hapless ship upon their coast, and again 
the exercise of its power is solicited in calming the 
angry waves to admit of fishing or visiting the main- 
land. 

The inhabitants all speak the Irish language, and 
among them is a trace of that government by chiefs 
which in former times existed in Ireland. The present 
chief or king of Inniskea is an intelligent peasant 
named Cain. His authority is universally acknowl- 
edged, and the settlement of all disputes is referred to 
his decision. Though nominally Eoman Catholics, 
these islanders know nothing of the tenets of that 
Church, and their worship consists of occasional meet- 
ings at their chief's house, with visits to a holy well, 
called in their native tongue Derivla.* 

All these customs take us back to the primitive idea 
of rain-making by sympathetic magic which is found so 
distinctly in savage practice. Many examples might be 
quoted supplying very close parallels to those we have 
just examined. In the Ta-tu-thi tribe of ISfew South 

* Lord Roden's Progress of the Reformation in Ireland, 1851, 
pp. 51-54. 



172 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

AY ales the rain-maker breaks off a piece of quartz 
crystal and spits it toward the sky; the rest of the 
crystal being wrapped up in emu feathers soaked in 
water and hidden.* A closer parallel is found in the 
Lampong country of Sumatra. A long stone standing 
on a flat one is supposed by the people to possess 
extraordinary power or virtue. It is reported to have 
been once thrown down into the water and to have 
raised itself again to its original position, agitating 
the elements at the same time with a prodigious storm. 
To approach it without respect is believed to be the 
source of misfortune to the offender, f In Samoa, too, a 
remarkably close parallel is found to the Inniskea cult. 
When there was over-much rain, the stone represent- 
ing the rain-making god was laid by the fire and kept 
heated till fine weather set in; while in a time of 
drought the priest and his followers dressed up in fine 
mats and went in procession to the stream, dipped the 
stone, and prayed for rain. J 

These examples of the ethnological genealogy of 
folklore are limited to subjects where two distinctly 
opposite phases of primitive thought are represented in 

* Labat, Relation hist, de VEthiopie Occident ale, ii, 180 ; 
Frazer, Golden Bough, ii, 14. On the altar of the church in the 
island of I-eolm-kill was a stone from which " the common 
people break pieces off, which they affect to use as medicine 
for man or beast in most disorders, and especially the flux." — 
Pococke's Tour through Scotland, 1760 (Scottish Hist. Soc), 
p. 82. 

f Marsdcn's Sumatra, p. 301. % Turner's Samoa, p. 45. 



THE ETHNIC GENEALOGY OF FOLKLORE. 173 

folklore, which are identified as savage or as Aryan 
culture respectively by the test of what scholars have to 
some extent agreed to define as Aryan. Unfortunately, 
the area covered by this agreement is not very wide, and 
opinions are not very settled. Still there does seem to 
be some sort of level below which it is admitted that 
Aryan culture can not be shown to penetrate, and this 
level is reached in the examples we have examined. 
No doubt Aryan culture was derived from pre-existing 
phases of savage culture, but when in that stage the 
Aryan people had not begun to migrate or spread over 
the earth's surface. 

It might be possible to extend inquiry on the present 
lines into subjects where the test of Aryan research is 
less certain in its results, and thus bring in the aid of 
folklore to bear upon some of the unsettled problems of 
Aryan history. Human sacrifice, for instance, is stated 
by Schrader to have taken a prominent place among 
the offerings the Aryans made to heaven ; * the con- 
tinuation of life after death, which in the lower culture 
is simply a repetition of earthly events in the unknown 
home, expands into the Aryan doctrine of a moral ret- 
ribution, according to Dr Tylor,f which, however, 
Schrader would not accept, if his version of Aryan 

* Prehistoric Antiquities of Aryan Peoples, p. 420. 

f Primitive Culture, ii, 86, 88. In a sixteenth century sermon, 
by Dr. Pemble (Oxford ed. 1659), a dying man is recorded to have 
said, " of his soule that it was a great bone in his body, and what 
should become of his soule after he was dead, that if he had done 
well he should be put into a pleasant green meadow." 



174 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

pessimistic thought is taken into account; Professor 
Bhys frequently points out where Celtic heathendom 
seems to diverge from Aryan culture toward the ruder 
culture of non-Aryan peoples ; special customs, like the 
barbarous rite of election to the kingship recorded by 
Giraldus as obtaining in Ireland, and others, are con- 
sidered by Mr. Elton to belong to the non-Aryans ; * 
while Miss Buckland, on good grounds as it seems to 
me, denies that rod-divination belongs to the Aryans, f 
I am aware that if we are ultimately obliged to fol- 
low Dr. Gruppe, much more of w T hat is now considered 
to be Aryan custom and belief will have to be thrown 
overboard, and, so far as my own researches go, I am 
prepared for such a lightening of the ship. But it 
will be seen from these indications of recent research, 
that the scope of inquiry suggested by these pages is 
likely to* increase rather than diminish. 

* Origins of English History, p. 176 et seq. 
f Joum. Anthrop. Inst. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE COXTIXUATIO^ OF RACES. 

The conclusions arrived at in the foregoing pages 
are, that survivals of non- Aryan faiths and usages are 
to be found in folklore, and that the conditions under 
which these survivals are found show that they date 
from a time prior to the arrival of the Celts in this 
country — from prehistoric times, in fact. No doubt 
such conclusions may seem a little hard to digest by 
those whose studies have not allowed them to dwell 
upon the "amazing toughness of tradition," and by 
those who have never wandered out of the paths laid 
down by the methods of chronological history. But they 
may also be questioned by students of comparative cult- 
ure on the ground that traditional faiths and usages 
found in an Aryan country can not be accepted as derived 
from a non- Aryan people, unless it can be proved that 
they have descended through the agency of the same 
people to whom they originally belonged. 

If for the purposes of the present inquiry it does not 
seem necessary to discuss objections which are founded 
on diametrically opposite methods of research, it must 
be admitted that an objection founded on the same 



176 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

method of research can not be overlooked or set aside as 
nought, especially as two inquiries have recently been 
put before the public by Mr. F. B. Jevons and Dr. 
AVinternitz, which discuss some of the Aryan survivals 
in folklore on the principles laid down by comparative 
philology. These inquiries proceed upon the plan of 
ascertaining the common factors among the Aryan 
peoples, and then discussing their presence among non- 
Aryan peoples on the theory that the latter must have 
borrowed. It will be seen that the method I have 
adopted is opposed to this, in that it does not necessarily 
admit that even a custom or belief common to all Aryan- 
speaking countries is Aryan. It might conceivably be 
a common non-Aryan custom borrowed or allowed 
by the Aryans. Take stone worship, for instance. It is 
found in all Aryan-speaking countries ; in India alone 
it is found as the special feature of non- Aryan tribes 
which exist to this day, and with this evidence from 
ethnography, coupled with the conclusions of compara- 
tive culture, we are able to suggest that stone worship is 
opposed to the general basis of Aryan culture. I should 
be inclined to argue on the same lines against Schrader's 
acceptance of human sacrifice as Aryan. It follows, 
therefore, that the question of the continuation of races 
after they have become nominally extinct is a matter of 
some importance to my theory. If the parentage of a 
given set of customs and beliefs can be reasonably es- 
tablished as non-Aryan, how is the descent to be traced 
except by means of non- Aryan people, who continued 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 177 

the blood of their race, together with the usages and 
beliefs of their race ? Clearly, if intrusted to the keep- 
ing only of Aryan converts, these non- Aryan usages and 
beliefs would have become so altered as not to be 
recognizable — the arrest of their development by the 
overspread of Aryan culture would have meant their 
extinction. 

I will, then, direct attention to the recent researches 
which go to prove the late, nay present, existence of 
descendants of prehistoric non- Aryan peoples in Britain. 
Naturally we turn, first of all, to the most difficult of all 
subjects, the evidence of philology. No one who has 
followed Professor Ehys in his researches into the Celtic 
languages can do otherwise than admit that he has made 
out a strong case for non- Aryan influences of a distinct 
and definite nature upon the Celtic tongues of Britain, 
and it seems now to be certain that the Picts of Scot- 
land and the Scots of Ireland were non- Aryan people. 
" While the Brython," he says, " might go on speaking 
of the non-Aryan native of Ireland who paid unwel- 
come visits to this country as a Scot, that Scot by and 
by learned a Celtic language and insisted on being 
treated as a Celt, as a Goidel, in fact, that is, I take 
it, how Scottus became the word used to translate 
Goidel."* 

This introduces a considerable parent stock of non- 
Aryan peoples almost at the dawn of history, and that 
they have never been exterminated as a race may be 

* Rhind Lectures, p. 53. 



178 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

proved by the researches of Dr. Beddoe and others, who 
point out that the features of the dark non-Aryan Silures 
of ancient Wales are still to be traced in the population 
of Glamorgan, Brecknock, Monmouth, Eadnor, and 
Hereford, while in some parts of Pembroke, Lanca- 
shire, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Gloucestershire, 
Wilts, and Somerset, the same racial characteristics 
present themselves.* 

Thus, then, while philology takes us back to pre- 
historic n on- Aryans, physiology takes us to their modern 
descendants. May we not then carry on the inquiry a 
little further, and endeavor to ascertain whether the 
condition of these modern descendants may not help us 
to grasp the fact that non- Aryan races are in Britain, as 
in India, a living factor to be reckoned with in discus- 
sing the problem of origins ? 

The senseless and imbecile destruction of ancient 
monuments has often been commented upon, but the 
preservation of these monuments has been the subject of 
but little remark. Who are the preservers — to whom 
are we students of the nineteenth century chiefly in- 
debted for the preservation of prehistoric graves and 
tumuli, of stone circles and earthworks — of Stonehenge 
and the Maeshow ? How is it that London stone still 
stands an object of interest to Londoners, and the coro- 
nation stone an object of interest to the nation ? The 

* See Beddoe's Races of Britain, p. 2G, and consult Mr. Elton's 
admirable summary of the whole evidence in his Origins of Eng- 
lish History, cap. iv. 



THE CONTINUATION OF KACES. 179 

answer is, that throughout the rough and turbulent 
times of the past, while abbeys and churches, and 
castles and halls, have been destroyed and desecrated, 
these prehistoric monuments have remained sacred in 
the eyes of the peasantry, have been guarded by un- 
known but revered beings of the spirit world, have been 
sanctified by the traditions of ages. Legends where 
stones have been removed and miraculously restored ; 
beliefs which point to the barrows and tumuli as the 
residence of fairies and ghosts; facts which show the 
resentment of people at the disturbance of these un- 
known memorials of the past, are too well known to need 
illustration in these pages. But I want to point out 
that the objects of all this reverence are relics, princi- 
pally, of the non- Aryan population, and to suggest that 
the continuance of the monumental remains by means 
of the traditional beliefs points back unmistakably to 
the living and continued influence of the people who 
constructed the monuments. The subject is a tempt- 
ing one to linger over, and, when properly set forth, 
shows exactly how the material and immaterial remains 
of past ages serve as complementary agencies to estab- 
lish the influence of the old races of people. 

There is a less pleasing picture, 'however, than this 
to discuss. Non- Aryan races have brought down sur- 
vivals of savage culture in our folklore, and this has not 
been accomplished without other marks of their sav- 
agery. Mr. Elton has drawn attention to the facts which 
tell in favor of a story of Giraldus Cambrensis being 



180 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

accepted as true of some parts of Ireland— little patches 
of savagery, it may be, in the midst of the more fertile 
fields of civilization. Giraldus states that he heard some 
sailors relate how they were driven by a storm to the 
northern islands, and while taking shelter there they 
saw a small boat rowing toward them. It was narrow 
and oblong, and made of wattled boughs, covered and 
sewed with the hides of beasts. In it were two men 
naked, except that they wore broad belts of the skins of 
some animal round their loins. They had yellow hair 
like the Irish, falling below their shoulders and covering 
the greater part of their bodies. The sailors found that 
these men came from some part of Connaught and spoke 
the Irish language. They were astonished at the ships 
they saw, and explained that in their own country they 
knew nothing of these things. * 

A traveler among people thus described is exactly 
on a par with the modern traveler among native races 
of uncivilized lands. The latter might very frequently 
see in the native villages or hut-dwellings " young maids 
stark naked grinding of corn with certain stones to 
make cakes thereof," the absence of clothing, the use of 
two stones for crushing the corn, both being indicative 
of the savage state of culture. And yet the above fact 
is related of the maidens of Cork in 1603 by the 
traveler Fynes Moryson, who alleges in support of 
his statement, that "I have seen [them] with these 



Topography of Ireland, lib. iii, cap. xxvi 



THE CONTINUATION OF KACES. 1£1 

eyes*. " An Italian priest traveling in Armagh is report- 
ed to have made a Latin distich upon the nakedness of 
the women. f But an even more startling picture is re- 
lated by the same author of a Bohemian nobleman who, 
traveling in Ulster, was regaled by the chief, O'Kane, 
" He was met at the door with sixteen women all naked 
except their loose mantles ; whereof eight or ten were 
very fair and two seemed very nymphes; with which 
strange sight his eyes being dazzled they led him into 
the house, and there sitting down by the fire, with 
crossed legs like tailors, and so low as could not but 
offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. 
Soon after O'Kane, the lord of the country, came in all 
naked, excepting a loose mantle and shoes which he 
put off as soon as he came in, and entertaining the 
baron in his best manner in the Latin tongue, desired 
him to put off his apparel which he thought to be a 
burden to him." J 

Spenser describes, about the same time as Moryson, 
the loose mantles which serve " for their house, their 
bed, and their garment." # They must have borne a 
most unmistakable resemblance to those of the Toda 
women of the Kilgiri Hills in India. These people are 
described as wearing but a simple robe thrown over both 
shoulders, and clasped in front by the hand, and which 

* Moryson, Hist, of Ireland, ii, 372 ; cf. B. Rich's Description 
of Ireland, 1610, p. 40. 

t Moryson, op. cit, ii, 377. \ Moryson, Travels, p. 181. 

* View of the State of Ireland, p. 47. 



182 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

are often thrown open to the full extent of both arms 
for the purpose of readjusting on the shoulders.* 

When William Lithgow was in Ireland in 1619, he 
records that he " saw women traveling or toiling at 
home, carrying their infants about their necks, and, 
laying their dugs over their shoulders, would give suck 
to their babes behind their backs, without taking them 
in their arms. Such kind of breasts . . . [were] more 
than half a yard long." f Such a sight has been fre- 
quently witnessed by modern travelers among savage 
races. Thus the Beiara women of New Britain carry 
their children " on their back in a bag of network which 
is suspended from their forehead by a band; their 
breasts are so excessively elongated that they can sling 
them across their shoulders to enable the babe to take 
hold of the nipple without changing its position." The 
Tasmanian women carried " their children wrapped in 
a kangaroo skin which hung behind their back, and 
to suckle them it was only necessary to throw their 
breasts, which were excessively elongated, over their 
shoulders." J 

It is surely a matter of some significance, taking 
into account the facts we have already dealt with, that 
at Broughton, in the hundred of Maelor Saesneg, in 
Flintshire, the common of Threapwood from time im- 
memorial was a place of refuge for the frail fair, who 

* King, Aboriginal Tribes of Nilgiri Hills, p. 9. 

f Lithgow's Travels, p. 40. 

% Featherman's Races of Mankind, ii, 51, 105. 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 183 

made here a transient abode clandestinely to be freed 
from the consequences of illicit lore. " Numbers of 
houses," says Pennant, " are scattered over the common 
for their reception. This tract till of late years had 
the ill-fortune to be extra-parochial. The inhabitants, 
therefore, considered themselves as beyond the reach of 
law, resisted all government, and even opposed the ex- 
cise laws, till they were forced to submit, but not with- 
out bloodshed on the occasion. Threapwood is derived 
from the Anglo-Saxon Threapian, to threap, a word 
still in use, signifying to persist in a fact or argument 
be it right or wrong. It is situated between the parishes 
of Malpas, Hanmer, and Worthenbury, but belonged to 
none till it was by the late Militia Acts decreed to be in 
the last for the purposes of the militia only ; but by the 
Mutiny Acts it is annexed to the parish of Malpas. 
Still doubts arise about the execution of several laws 
within this precinct." * The accidents of local history, 
however varied and impressive, are hardly sufficient to 
account for such a state of things. The persistence of 
old custom, driven from the towns and everywhere 
where the Church and State had penetrated, would 
account for Threapwood and its peculiar immunity, and 
it would supply us with an example of the forces which 
were at work during the long battle between savagery 
and civilization. When Pennant described Threapwood 
the battle was nearly over. The dregs of the unruly 
populace he might have seen would probably not present 

* Pennant's Tours in Wales, i, 290. 
IS 



184 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

us with an extended or pleasing picture of ancient life. 
Bat at least we have here an example where law and 
morality, where the civilization of Britain under the 
Gaelphs, were not represented at all. The only question 
is, may we extend such evidence ? 

It is not possible to extend it far on the present 
occasion, but it is a subject which needs attention at 
the hands of those who are investigating the records of 
the past. We of this age are so accustomed to the lan- 
guage and the results of civilization that it becomes in- 
creasingly difficult to understand the ruder conditions 
of only a century since. I shall, therefore, devote a 
page or two to this subject, selecting such evidence as 
will serve for example of what would be forthcoming 
by farther research. 

In Ireland, at the conquest under Henry II, the 
natives were driven into the woods and mountains, and, 
as Boate said in 1652, these were " called the wild Irish, 
because that in all manner of wildness they may be 
compared with most barbarous nations of the earth." * 
Bat, wild as they were, they gradually recovered much of 
their territory, and the English remaining there " joined 
themselves with the Irish and took upon them their 
wild fashions and their language." Then we have 
Spenser telling us that " there be many w T ide countries 
in Ireland which the lawes of England were never estab- 
lished in ... by reason, dwelling as they doe whole 
nations and septs of the Irish together without any 

* Ireland's Natural History, Sect. 5. 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 185 

Englishmen amongst them, they may doe what they 
list." They live for " the most part of the yeare in 
boolies, pasturing upon the mountaine and waste wilde 
places, and removing still to fresh land as they have de- 
pastured the former ; " and he goes on to say that " by 
this eustome of boolying there grow in the mean time 
many great enormityes ; for, first, if there be any out- 
lawes or loose people they are evermore succoured and 
finde reliefe only in these boolies . . . moreover, the 
people that live in these boolies growe thereby the 
more barbarous and live more licentiously than they 
could in townes." * 

This is the picture of uncivilization in Ireland. It 
is not the story of a poor, degraded population falling 
into bad habits from a previous state of conformity to 
the general law. It is the picture of a people who had 
never yet advanced from the stage of uncivilization. 
This may, perhaps, be better illustrated by the follow- 
ing account of a definite example of " boolying " exist- 
ing in modern days. 

There are several villages in Achill, particularly 
those of Keeme and Keele, where the huts of the in- 
habitants are all circular or oval, and built for the most 
part of round water-washed stones collected from the 
beach and arranged without lime or any other cement. 
During the spring the entire population of the villages 
in Achill close their winter dwellings, tie their infant 

* " View of the State of Ireland, " Tracts and Treatises, vol. i, 
421. 



186 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

children on their backs, carry with them their loys and 
some corn and potatoes, with a few pots and cooking 
utensils, drive their cattle before them and migrate into 
the hills, where they find fresh pasture for their flocks. 
There they build rude huts or summer-houses of sods 
and wattles, called booleys, and then cultivate and sow 
with corn a few fertile spots in the neighboring valleys. 
They thus remain for about two months of the spring 
and early summer till the corn is sowed ; their stock of 
provisions being exhausted and the pasture consumed 
by their cattle they return to the shore to fish. N"o 
further care is taken of the crops, to which they return 
in autumn in a manner similar to the spring migra- 
tion.* 

Certainly the borderland between Scotland and Eng- 
land can not be said to have become civilized until late 
down in history. Redesdale, says Dr. Eobertson, was, 
until quite recently, a very secluded valley surrounded 
by moors and morasses, and occupied to a great extent 
by shaggy woods. Until all-conquering Rome planted 
her standard in its center, Redesdale must have been 
singularly inaccessible to the outer world. After the 
Roman domination came to an end the district seems to 
have remained undisturbed by Saxon from the east or 
Northman from the west. In their sylvan fortresses the 
inhabitants held their own, nay, for many generations 
did much more, harrying and robbing their more peace- 
ful neighbors. Redesdale being a regality, with a resi- 

* Wilde's Beauties of the Bopie, p. 89. 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 187 

dent lord of the manor supreme for centuries, it was 
found that the kings writ runneth not in Eedesdale. 
Until the time of Bernard Gilpin, the Cheeyes — that is, 
the men of Eedesdale — were probably hardly Christians, 
even by profession. Their clergy and instructors are 
described by Bishop Fox in 1498 as wholly ignorant of 
letters, the priest of ten years' standing not knowing 
how to read the ritual. Among this community of 
men, ignorant, dissolute, accustomed to crime, debarred 
by laws made specially against them from mixing freely 
with their neighbors, having only slight connection 
with the world beyond their own morass-girt vale, and 
intermarrying among themselves, it may be expected 
that old customs and superstitions lingered longer than 
elsewhere.* 

* Berwickshire Naturalist's Field Club, ix, 512. " Tradition 
without being supported by any historical authority, says that the 
square keep or tower of Crawley was built by a famous ' Rider ' 
called Crawley ; hence the place got its name. The tower was, at 
an after period, the residence of the family of Harrowgate, of one 
of whom many anecdotes are yet extant, and amongst others is 
the following: Mr. Harrowgate possessed a. remarkably fine 
white horse, for he was not behind his neighbours in making ex- 
cursions north of the Cheviot, and the then proprietor of the 
Crawley estate took so great a fancy to this beautiful charger 
that, after finding he could not tempt Harrowgate to sell him 
for money, he offered him the whole of this fine estate in ex- 
change for his horse ; but Mr. H., in the true spirit of a Border 
rider, made him this bold reply : ' I can find lands when I have 
use for them ; but there is no sic a beast (i. e., horse) i' yon side 
o' the Cheviot, nor yet o' this, and I wad na part wi' him if Craw- 
ley were made o' gold/ How little did the value of landed prop- 
erty appear in those days of trouble and inquietude, and how, 



188 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. 

I will now quote a curious account of a savage 
people once existing in Wales, from information col- 
lected from the locality for a writer in the Gentleman } s 
Magazine : 

" I learn from a letter which I have received, that 
1 there is a certain red-haired, athletic race about Cayo 
and Pencarreg, in Carmarthenshire, called Cochion (the 
Eed ones). The principal personage in the pedigrees 
of the district is Meirig Goch, or Meirig the Red, from 
whom many families trace their descent. The Cochion 
of Pencarreg were in former days noted for their per- 
sonal strength and pugnacity at the fairs of the country, 
where sometimes they were not only a terror to others, 
but to each other when there were none else left with 
whom they could contend.' From another letter, written 
by a person residing in a different part of the country, 
and who wrote quite independently of the former, I 
learn that ' the race of people referred to lived about 
seventy or eighty years ago, in the parishes of Cemaes 
and Mallwyd, the former in this county, and the latter 
in Merionethshire. They were called " Y Gwyllied Co- 
chion." Gwyllied, according to Eichards of Coychurch, 
in his " Thesaurus," are " spirits, ghosts, hobgoblins," 
and Gwyll, a hag or fairy. " Eed fairies " would, I sup- 
pose, be the best translation. They were strong men, 

much less were the comforts of succeeding generations consulted ! 
The only property of value then to a Borderer was his trusty 
arms and a fleet and active horse, and these seem to have been 
the only things appreciated by this old gentleman." — Denham 
Tracts, 17. 



THE CONTINUATION OF KACES. 189 

and lived chiefly on plunder. In some old cottages in 
Ceinaes there are scythes put in the chimneys, to pre- 
vent the entrance of the depredators, still to be seen.' 
In a subsequent letter I was informed : ' On further in- 
quiry, I find that the " Gwyllied Cochion " can be traced 
back to the year 1554, when they were a strong tribe, 
having their headquarters near Dinas (city), Mallwyd, 
Merionethshire. They were most numerous in " Coed y 
Dugoed Mawr" (literally the "wood of the great 
dark, or black wood "). They built no houses, and prac- 
ticed but few of the arts of civilized life. They possessed 
great powers over the arrow and the stone, and never 
missed their mark. They had a chief of their own ap- 
pointment, and kept together in the most tenacious man- 
ner, having but little intercourse with the surrounding 
neighborhood, except in the way of plundering, when 
they were deemed very unwelcome visitors. They would 
not hesitate to drive away sheep and cattle, in great num- 
bers, to their dens. A Welsh correspondent writes to 
me thus : " They would not scruple to tax (trethu) their 
neighbors in the face of day, and treat all and every- 
thing as they saw fit ; till at last John Wynn ap Mere- 
dydd and Baron Owen were sent for, who came with a 
strong force on Christmas night, 1534, and destroyed 
by hanging upward of a hundred of them. There is a 
tradition that some of the women were pardoned, and a 
mother begged very hard to have her son spared, but, 
on being refused, she opened her breast, and said that 
it had nursed sons who would yet wash their hands in 



190 ETHNOLOGY L\ FOLKLORE. 

Baron Owen's blood! Bent on revenge, they watched 
the Baron carefully, and on his going to Montgomery 
Sessions, they waylaid him, and actually fulfilled the old 
woman's prediction. This place is called to this day 
Llidiart y Barwn (the Baron's gate), and the tradition 
is quite fresh in the neighborhood." He says that the 
" Dugoed mawr " has disappeared long since, and the 
county is much less woody than it was centuries ago. 
But as you, I presume, are more anxious to have 
some traces of the characteristics of the race than a 
history of their actions, I have made inquiries on that 
head, and I find that the Gwyllied were a tall, athletic 
race, with red hair, something like the Patagonians of 
America. They spoke the Welsh language. I was 
fortunate enough to find out some descendants of the 
Gwyllied on the maternal side, and those in my native 
parish of Llangurig (on the way from Aberystwith to 
Ehayader). When these Welsh Kaffirs were sent from 
Mallwyd they wandered here and there, and some of 
the females were pitied by the farmers and taken into 
their houses and taught to work, and one of these was 
married to a person not far from this place, and the 
descendants now live at Bwlchygarreg, Llangurig. I 
knew the old man well. There certainly was something 
peculiar about him — he was about seventy when I was 
a boy of fifteen ; he had dark, lank hair, a very ruddy 
skin, with teeth much projecting, and a receding brow. 
I never heard his honesty questioned, but mentally he 
was considered very much below the average ; the 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 191 

children also are not considered quick in anything. 
They do not like to be taunted with being of the " Bed 
Blood," I am told. I never knew till lately that they 
were in any way related to the Gwyllied.' " * 

When we come to England we are not any nearer 
civilization so long as we consider the evidence which 
has been kept so much in the background. As Sir 
Arthur Mitchell has observed, if such facts as are forth- 
coming of Ireland and Scotland have not been found in 
England, it is probably because they have not been 
looked for.f 

History has preserved the fact that at the battle of 
Hastings the followers of Harold used battle-mauls 
made of stone, which they hurled against their enemies. 
But such evidence has been ignored by historians, who 
speak of the great battle and the opposing forces in the 
same terms as they apply to the battle of Waterloo. 
Stone weapons surviving in use for battle purposes 
signify that ideas of the Stone Age might survive in 
use for the every-day purposes of social life. It is not 
easy to separate the one from the other, and certainly 
the attribution of a Stone Age culture to some of the 
peasantry of Britain in Anglo-Saxon times seems to me' 
far less difficult to grasp than the half -poetized descrip- 
tions which, when made to do duty for the whole people, 

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1852, part ii, p. 589. The condition 
of the Welsh population also receives illustration from an article 
in Transactions of Cymmrodorion Society, i, 79. 

f The Past in the Present, p. 279. 



1<J2 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

must be wrong, even if they are correct for the govern- 
ing classes. 

It is not wise to depend upon documents with a 
political bias, but the picture drawn by Dudley Carleton 
in 1G06 is a very telling one. It has relation to the dis- 
cussion in Parliament about the title to be assumed by 
James I, and it relates that " Sir W. Morrice prest 
hotly uppon the motion to haue the King's title of 
Great Britanny confirmed by Act of Parlement ; but he 
was answeared by one James, who concluded a long de- 
clamation with this description of the Brettons, that 
they were first an ydolatrous nation and worshipers of 
Diuels. In the beginning of Christianity they were 
thrust out into the mountaines, where they liued long 
like theefes and robbers, and are to this day the most 
base pesantly perfidious people of the world." * 

Mrs. Bray had something to say of the Devonshire 
savage in her letters to Southey. Her picture of the 
Dartmoor family and hut in her second letter is in 
strict accord with the account of the inhabitants of a 
village called the Gubbins, who were termed by Fuller, 
in his English Worthies, to be " a lawless Scythian sort 
of people. " In Mrs. Bray's time the term Gubbins was 
still known in the vicinity of Heathfield, though it was 
applied to the people and not to the place. They still had 
the reputation of having been a wild and almost savage 
race ; and not only this, but another name, that of " cramp 
eaters," was applied to them by way of reproach. Instead 

* Domestic Papers, James /, 1606. 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 193 

of buns, which are usually eaten at country revels in the 
West of England, the inhabitants of Brent Tor district 
could produce nothing better than cramps, an inferior 
species of cake, and thus they were called cramp eaters.* 
A not altogether different picture from this is por- 
trayed by one of the agricultural reformers of the early 
part of the present century. Speaking of the Cam- 
bridgeshire fens, we are told that " the laborers are 
much less industrious and respectable than in many 
counties. In the fens it is easily accounted for : they 
never see the inside of a church, or any one on a Sunday 
but the alehouse society. Upon asking my way (toward 
the evening) in the fens, I was directed, with this ob- 
servation from the man who informed me, "Are you 
not afraid to go past the bankers at work yonder, sir ? " 
I was told these bankers were little better than savages, f 
As further evidence of how little influence upon the less 
frequented parts of the country great political events 
have exercised, we may cite a most telling example in 
Sussex. There is much to show that the silence of 
Domesday upon the district of the Weald is due to the fact 
that William's agents did not penetrate into these wilds, 
and a few years ago two distinguished geologists travel- 
ing there were startled by hearing a Sussex laborer 
speaking of William the Conqueror as " Duke William," 
and that, too, within sight of Senlac.J 

* Bray's Tamar and the Tavy, i, 22, 236. 
f Gooch's Agric. of Cambridgeshire, p. 289. 
\ Jonrn. Anthrop. Inst., iii, 52. 



194 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. 

It will not, I think, be considered that too much 
attention has been given to this part of the subject, 
though it is at the end of our inquiry. The question as 
to how people act, live, eat, and sleep is closely con- 
nected with the question as to how people think and 
believe. Of course the examples I have given are not 
exhaustive ; but I think they are fully representative 
and will help us to understand how it is that survivals 
of savage thought and belief can be traced here and 
there, and can be fixed upon as evidence of a race who 
have never risen to the level of Celtic or Teutonic or 
Christian civilization. 

It would appear, then, that cannibal rites were con- 
tinued in these islands until historic times ; that a 
naked people continued to live under our sovereigns 
until the epoch which witnessed the greatness of Shake- 
speare ; that head-hunting and other indications of 
savage culture did not cease with the advent of civil- 
izing influences — that, in fact, the practices which help 
us to realize that some of the ancient British tribes 
were pure savages, help us to realize, also, that savagery 
was not stamped out all at once and in every place, and 
that, judged by the records of history, there must have 
remained little patches of savagery beneath the fair 
surface which the historian presents to us when he tells 
us of the doings of Alfred, Harold, William, Edward, or 
Elizabeth. It seems difficult, indeed, to understand that 
monarchs like these had within their rule groups of 
people whose status was that of savagery ; it seems 



THE CONTINUATION OF RACES. 195 

difficult to believe that Spenser and Ealeigh actually 
came into contact with specimens of the Irish savage ; it 
is impossible to read the glowing pages of Kemble and 
Green and Freeman without feeling they have told 
us only of the advanced guard of the nation, not of the 
nation as it actually was. Yet this is the view which 
folklore puts before us. Difficult as it maybe to realize, 
it is undeniably true that the records of uncivilization 
are as real as those of civilization, and that both belong 
to the same geographical area. The difficulty is not to 
be met by ignoring the least pleasing of the two records 
and magnifying the more pleasing. It is to be met by 
careful examination of the phenomena, and the correct 
interpretation of the various elements and their rela- 
tionship one to the other. The examples of rude people 
which have escaped the fatal silence of history show at 
least that, if there is evidence of savage usages and 
beliefs in folklore, there is evidence also of savage peo- 
ple who are capable, so far as their standard of culture 
shows, of keeping up the usages and beliefs of savage 
ancestors. 



INDEX. 



African beliefs, 68-69, 72, 89, 122. 

See Ashantee, Budas. 
Aged put to death, 136. 
Agriculture, place of, in culture de- 
velopment, 71-72. 
Ainos, influence of the Japanese 

on, 44. 
Amalgamation, principle of, in 

folklore, 113-14. 
Ancestors, eating of dead, 121, 

125. 
worship of, 128-29. 
Animal guardian spirits of wells, 

89, 93-94, 102-5. 
Animals, power of witches over, 50. 
removed at death of owner, 126, 

127. 
sacrifice of, 137-145. 
transfer of superstitious practices 

to, 145. 
Animism, 67-68. 
Arm, right, of children kept un- 

christened, 131. 
Arran Isles, beliefs in, 54. 
Arrested development in folklore, 

11. 
Arresting powers in folklore, 12, 

13, 14, 135, 162. 
Arrowheads (stone), 53-56. 
Artemis, cult of, 16-17, 19. 
Arthur, King, living as a raven, 

161. 
Aryan culture, 14, 15, 69. 

custom and belief in folklore, 



13, 14, 15, 18, 65, 12S-29, 135, 
157-58. 

Ash sap given to children as first 
food, 130-31. 

Ashantee, customs of, 154, 156. 

Australians, rain-making by, 171. 
influence of conquered aborigi- 
nes among, 48. 

Banffshire, belief in, 55. 

Baptism, rite of, 131. 

Basques, couvade among, 135. 

Battahs, head-hunting by, 155. 

Belisama, river, 78. 

Berrington well worship, 83. 

Bee, soul entering into a, 162. 

Bees, telling of the death of own- 
ers to, 126, 128. 

Bird ceremony in well worship, 88. 

Birth ceremonies, 130. 

Blood, drawing of, at funerals, 127- 
28. 

Boar's head ceremony, 35. 

Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, well 
worship at, 82. 

Boolying, custom of, 185. 

Border customs, 131, 145, 148. 

Boyne, tradition concerning the, 77. 

Brains of enemy extracted by Irish 
warrior, 147. 

Breasts of Irish women, 182. 

Brindle, well worship at, 84. 

Britons, Ancient, customs of, 38, 
121, 131, 143, 150, 160. 



198 



INDEX. 



Brythonic Celts, country of, 89. 
Budas of Abyssinia, influence of, 

45. 
Burial customs, 121, 122, 126, 127. 
Burmese, influence of hill tribes 

upon, 45. 
Burne, Miss, on well worship, 84. 
Bushes at holy wells, 86. 
Butterflies considered to be souls, 

160. 

Caistor gad-whip ceremony, 36. 

Caithness, beliefs in, 55. 

Cakes eaten at wells, 83. 

Cambridgeshire, condition of la- 
borers in, 193. 

Campbell, Mr. J. F., on race tradi- 
tions in folklore, 56. 

Cannibalism in Britain, 121. 
in Aryan tradition, 158. 

Cat- transformations in witchcraft, 
50. 

Cattle, transference of superstition 
to, 145. 

Cattle-transformations in witch- 
craft, 50. 

Caldron, or dish, in well worship, 
100-1. 

Celtic districts of Britain, well 
worship in, 86-106. 

Celts, people conquered by. See 
Non- Aryans. 

Ceylon, demon beliefs in, 47. 
witch practices in, 51. 

Changes in folklore not develop- 
ment but decay, 113. 

Cheeves, or Kedesdale men, 186-, 
87. 

Chinese, influences of conquered 
aborigines upon, 45. 

Christianity, influence of, on folk- 
lore, 12, 14. 

Church, horses' heads dedicated to, 
35 ; stag ceremony in, 35 ; hu- 



man heads dedicated to, 150 ; 

washing of images in, 170 n. 
Civilization, foreign origin of, 3-4 ; 

European, 17. 
Clothes, offering of, at wells, 85. 
Cock, sacrifice of, 113. 
Connaught, savage race from, 180. 
Conquered race, mythic influence 

of, 41-66. 
Cornwall, animal sacrifice in, 139. 
souls taking form of animals in, 

160. 
well worship in, 90-91. 
Corpse used in connection with 

food, 115. 
Couvade, custom of, 133-34. 
Cramp eaters, 192. 
Criminal caste, superstitions con- 
nected with, 122-23, 141, 146. 
Cursing at holy wells, 88. 
Custom, force of, 5. 
Custom and ritual, ethnic elements 

in, 21-40. 

Dairy produce superstition, 115. 
Dale Abbey, holy well at, 82. 
Dancing at funerals, 122. 
Daubing customs, 17. 
Dead, cult of, non- Aryan, 121, 126 ; 

Aryan, 126-128. 
Death by force, 136. 
Decay, principle of, in folklore, 

113. 
Dee river, superstition concerning, 

77-78. 
Deer- transformations, 50. 
Deisil, 94, 98, 163. 
Demons, belief in, 48, 53. 
Development and survival, 1-20. 
Devil represented by frogs in well, 

87. 
Devonshire folklore, 30-34, 53, 161, 

192. 
Dionysiac mysteries, 17, 2S-C0. 



INDEX. 



199 



Dish, or caldron, in well-worship, 

100-1. 
Doors and windows opened at 

death, 125. 
Dress, portions of, offered at wells, 

84. 
Drowning person, superstition 

against helping, 74. 
Druidism, 58-62. 
Dual element in folklore, 13, 14, 

172. 

Eel, guardian spirit of well, 94. 

Elliot, Sir W., on race elements in 
Indian custom, 23. 

Ellis, Major, on local and tribal be- 
liefs, 68. 

Elsdon church, horses' heads in, 
35. 

Enemies, savage treatment of, 151- 
56. 

Epilepsy, cure of, 116. 

Eros, stone representation of, 19. 

Esquimaux origins, 18. 

Essex folklore, 35. 

Esthonian river beliefs, 73. 

Evil, expulsion of, 165. 

Eyes, cure of sore, by wells, 84, 92. 

Fairies, race origin of, 64-65, 163. 
stealing the soul by, 162. 
spirits of the wells, 86. 
Fat of enemy used as saining torch, 

146, 157. 
Father, performance of birth cere- 
monies by, 132. 
Fear of the dead, 121. 
Fetichism, 72. 

Fire put out at death, 127, 128. 
Fire, birth ceremonies at, 132. 
Fish, guardian spirits of wells, 93- 

94, 102. 
Flintshire, Threapwood common in, 
182-84. 

14 



Fly, guardian spirit of wells, 103. 
Folklore, growth of the study, 1. 
Food ceremonies at birth, contrasts 

in, 130-32. 
Formula of well worship, 106; of 

superstitions connected with 

the dead, 125; of witch and 

fairy beliefs, 66. 
Fox's head, preventive against 

witchcraft, 35. 
Frazer, Mr., on agricultural gods, 

70. 
Frog-prince story, Oxfordshire, 87. 
Frogs, spirits of the wells, 87 n. 

Gad-whip ceremony at Caistor, 36. 
Garland dressing at wells, 82, 84, 

86. 
Garos, customs of, 154, 159. 
Genealogy of folklore, 110-74. 
Germans, worship of animals' heads 

by, 34. 
Ghosts, 122. 

Gloucestershire folklore, 37, 75. 
Godiva legend, 36-40. 
Goidelic Celts, 92. 
Grave-mould, superstition as to, 114, 

115. 
Graves, disturbance of, 114-115; 

non-disturbance of, 123. 
Greek cults. iSee Artemis, Dionys- 

iac, Zeus. 
Gubbins, village of, Devonshire, 

192. 
Guest-friendship, 158. 

Hare-transformations in witchcraft, 
50. 

Hartland, Mr., on fairies, 56 ; Godi- 
va ceremony, 37 ; on sin-eating, 
120. 

Harvest goddess in India, 27. 

Hastings, battle of, stone axes used 
at, 191. 



200 



INDEX. 



Head of sacrificed animal, sanctity 

of, 26, 34. 
Head- hunting, 148, 149, 150, 154r- 

56. 
Heart of dying transferred to the 

living, 157. 
Hearth god, 128. 
Herakles, stone representation of, 

19. 
Hereford, sin-eating in, 117. 
Historians 1 record of civilizations, 

2-3, 194. 
Holne, custom at, 32-34. 
Holy niawle, 136. 
Hornchurch, ceremony at, 35. 
Horses' heads in Elsdon church, 35. 
Human sacrifice, 60-61, 73, 74, 79, 

127, 141-42, 143, 173. 

Image, wooden, 141. 

witch, 51. 
Images, church, washing of, 170 n. 
Inconsistencies in folklore, 8, 13, 

111. 
Indian customs and rites, 19, 22-26. 
See Garos, Lhoosai, Nagas, 
Orissa. 

race beliefs, 46-47. 
Initiation in witchcraft, 57. 
Inniskea, stone worship in, 170. 
Ireland, animal sacrifice in, 141. 

beliefs of, 50, 54, 115, 116. 

couvade in, 133. 

expulsion of evil in, 165. 

metempsychosis in, 161. 

stone worship in, 170. 

swearing upon the skull, 147. 

war customs, 147-48. 

well worship in, 92-95. 
Irish, nakedness of, 180-81. 
ltalones, treatment of enemies by, 
152, 154. 

Kelly, W., on Zeus tradition, 130. 



Kempoch Stane, Firth of Clyde, 49. 

Kindred, eating of, 125. 

King's Teignton, custom at, 30-32. 

Lancashire well worship, 84. 

Land, contempt for property in, 
187 n, 

Lang, Mr., on comparison in folk- 
lore, 8 ; on cult of Artemis, 16. 

Langobards, adoration of goat's 
head by, 34. 

Lauder, stone implements at, 55. 

Lhoosai, customs of, 153, 155, 159. 

Lincolnshire folklore, 36, 116. 
well worship, 85. 

Lludd, god of the Severn, 76. 

Localization of primitive belief, 67^ 
109. 

Locality and race, 18. 

Long Barrow interments, 151. 

Lubbock, Sir J., on race elements 
in manners and customs, 15- 
16. 

Ludgate Hill, name of, 76. 

Lydney Park pavement, 75. 

Madagascar, influence of conquered 

aborigines in, 43. 
Madness, cure of, at wells, 90, 99. 
Maiden names retained by married 

women, 132. 
Malays, influence of conquered 

aborigines upon, 44-45. 
Man, Isle of, sale of wind in, 49. 
Maoris, treatment of enemies by, 

152, 154. 
Materialism in folklore, 120. 
Meels, mold from graveyard, 114. 
Megalithic monuments, 107. 
Metempsychosis, 160. 
Midsummer fires, 113. 
Milk, Irish superstitious practice 

with, 115. 
Mold from graveyard, 114-15. 



INDEX. 



201 



Monuments, destruction of, 178. 
Mother, performance of birth cere- 
monies by, 132. 
Moths considered to be souls, 160. 

Naga hill tribes, head-hunting by, 

155, 159. 
Naked votaries at sacred festivals, 

24, 28, 38, 39. 
Nakedness of Irish, 180-81. 
Name, efficacy of, in magic ritual, 

89. 
Natural objects, worship of, 67-109. 
Neevougi, Irish god, 171. 
New Guinea, influence of conquered 

aborigines in, 48. 
Nightjar, souls of unbaptized chil- 
dren embodied in, 161. 
Nodens, god of the Severn, 76, 
N on- Aryan race, traces of, 92, 177, 

178. 
Non- Aryans, folklore origins traced 

to, 14, 19, 29, 66, 108, 121, 134, 

136, 137, 156, 160, 163, 166, 

167, 
Northamptonshire cattle sacrifice. 

139. 
Northumberland, offering of horses' 

heads, 35 ; well worship, 85. 
Nuada, god of the Severn, 76. 
Nutt, Mr., on the caldron in Celtic 

myth, 101. 

Odin, legend of, 84. 

Ointment, magic, 51. 

Oran, St., sacrifice of, 61. 

Orissa, witch beliefs in, 50. 

Orkney, objections to rescue drown- 
ing persons in, 73. 
sale of wind in, 49. 

Oswestry, well worship at,. 86. 

Oxenham family, tradition concern- 
ing, 161. 

Oxford, sin- eating in, 117. 



Pallas Athene, stone representation 
of, 19. 

Pastoral life, place of, in culture 
development, 71. 

Peg O'Nell, spirit of the Kibble, 78. 

Peg Powler, spirit of the Tees, 78. 

Pembrokeshire, sale of wind in, 48. 

Peru, expulsion of evil in, 166. 

Pharaeans, stones worshiped by, 
19. 

Philology, evidence of, as to non- 
Aryans, 177. 

Physical types of non- Aryans, 178. 

Picts, well worship by, 108. 

Pins thrown into wells, 83, 84, 85, 
87, 90. 

Pitt- Ei vers, General, on rag offer- 
ings, 107. 

Potraj, Indian rural god, 22. 

Priest, or priestess, at well rites, 88, 
90. 

Principles of folklore, non-develop- 
ment, 7 ; arrested by hostile 
forces, 11 ; change by decay, 
113 ; non-materialistic, 120. 

Kace elements in folklore, 11-12, 19, 
59. 

Eaces, continuation of, 175-95. 

Eag offerings, geographical area of 
custom, 106-7. 

Eag wells, 92, 96, 97, 98. 

Eain-god, traces of worship, 95, 101 ; 
represented by stones, 170. 

Eaven-transformations, 50, 160. 

Eed race of people in Caermarthen- 
shire, 188-90. 

Eedesdale, savagery of, 186-87. 

Ehys, Professor, on Celtic divini- 
ties, 70, 71; on Celts, 92 •, on 
Picts, 108; Celtic languages, 
178 ; on Druidism, 63. 

Eibble river, superstitions concern- 
ing, 78. 



202 



INDEX. 



River worship, 72-79. 

.Road, corpse not carried along a 

private, 121. 
Rod divination, 173. 

St. Briavels, Godiva ceremony at, 

37. 
St. Paul's Cathedral, stag ceremony 

in, 35. 
Salmon, guardian spirit ol well, 94. 
Samoans, head-hunting by, 156; 

rain-making, 172. 
Savagery, folklore parallels to, 9-10. 

See Uncivilization. 
Scotland, animal sacrifice in, 138- 

39, 140. 
beliefs of, 50. 52, 54, 114, 119, 

121, 130. 
couvadc in, 134. 
sale of wind in, 49. 
stone worship in, 167. 
well worship in, 95-103, 108. See 

Orkney, Shetland. 
Sefton, well worship at, 84. S 
Sena, priestesses of, 49, 102. * 
Severn, river, beliefs concerning, 

75. 
Shetland folklore, 115. 
Shropshire, sin-eating in, 118. 
well worship, 82-83, 86-87. 
Siamese, influence of hill tribes 

upon, 45. 
Sickness, transfer of, 143-44. 
Silence, ceremony at wells per- 
formed in, 100. 
Sin-eating, 117. 
Skull superstition, 116, 146. 
Smith, Prof. Kobertson, on Semitic 

religions, 68, 69, 79; on well 

worship, 104, 108. 
Solomon islanders, treatment of 

enemies by, 153, 155. 
Soul, beliefs as to the, 160-62, 173. 
Soul-mass cakes, 127, 128. 



Southam, Godiva ceremony at, 17, 
37. 

Sparrow considered as the soul, 161. 

Spey, river, yearly victim neces- 
sary for, 75. 

Sterling, ceremony at, 39. 

Stone arrowheads, 53-55. 

Stone worship, 19, 27, 167-72. 

Storm-raising, 169. 

Substitution in folklore, 113. 

Sumatra, rain-making in, 172. 

Survival and development, 1-20. 

Survivals, arrested development 
of, 7. 

Sussex tradition of Wjlliam the 
Conqueror, 193. f 

Swans, virgins 1 souls pass into, 161. 

Sword, food given on, to children, 
131. 

Symbolism in folklore, 113. 

Tees, river, sprite of the, 78. 

Teutonic centers of England, well 
worship in, 81-86. 

Threapwood in Flintshire, 182-83. 

Tongue, tips of, taken by Irish 
warriors, 147. 

Tribal gods and local gods, 69. 

Trophy, war, 158. 

Trout, miraculous, in sacred wells, 
93, 94, 102. 

Tweed, people supposed to be de- 
scendants of, 74. 

Tylor, Dr., on civilization, 3; on 
folklore and savagery, 9 ; on 
animism, 68 ; on soul - mass 
cakes, 128; on metempsycho- 
sis, 163. 

Ugly Burn, river, water spirits of 

74, 75. 
Uncivilization, native origin of, 4- 

5 ; examples of, in Britain, 180- 

95. 



INDEX. 



203 



Victoria aborigines, fat of dead man 
used by, 153. 

Wales, animal sacrifice in, 139. 

beliefs of, 50. 

non- Aryan races in, 178. 

savage people in, 188. 

sin-eating in, 118, 119. 

well worship in, 87-88, 91. 
Walhouse, Mr. M. J., on rag offer- 
ings, 106. 
"Warwickshire folklore. See Godiva. 
Well worship, 77, 79-109. 
Welsheries, 83. 

William the Conqueror in Sussex 
tradition, 192. 



Wind, sale of, 48-49. 

Wise man of Yorkshire villages, 

113. 
Witch beliefs, 35, 48-63, 116, 141- 

42. 
Witchcraft, race origin of, 48-66. 
Worm, guardian spirit of wells, 

103. 

Yore, river, spirits of the, 79. 
Yorkshire, animal sacrifice in, 139. 

beliefs, 50, 54, 123. 

couvade in, 134. 

well worship, 85. 

Zeus, feeding of the infant, 130. 



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of architecture, heraldry, and sculpture. One finds descriptions of ornamental wood?, 
precious stones, glass, pottery, armors, and military costumes. Everything which 
forms the component part of a picture is given, or what may be included in its descrip- 
tion, as saints and their symbols, also analysis of colors, and artistic implements. 
Mention is made of various schools of art and public galleries, etc. As a hand-book 
for students or any one seeking knowledge on the subjects contained, it can not fail to 
be of great use, and is a good addition to any library." — Chicago Times. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 




D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



TTISTOR Y OF THE PEOPLE 
*1 OF THE UNITED STATES, from 
the Revolution to the Civil War. By 
John Bach McMaster. To be com- 
pleted in five volumes. Vols. I, II, 
and III now ready. 8vo, cloth, gilt 
top, $2.50 each. 

In the course of this narrative much is written 
of wars, conspiracies, and rebellions ; of Presi- 
dents, of Congresses, of embassies, of treaties, 
of the ambition of political leaders, and of the 
rise of great parties in the nation. Yet the his- 
tory of the people is the chief theme. At every 
stage of the splendid progress which separates the 
America of Washington and Adams from the 
John bach mcmaster. America in which we live, it has been the au- 
thor's purpose to describe the dress, the occupa- 
tions, the amusements, the literary canons of the times ; to note the changes 
of manners and morals ; to trace the growth of that humane spirit which 
abolished punishment for debt, and reformed the discipline of prisons and 
of jails ; to recount the manifold improvements which, in a thousand ways, 
have multiplied the conveniences of life and ministered to the happiness of 
our race ; to describe the rise and progress of that long series of mechanical 
inventions and discoveries which is now the admiration of the world, and our 
just pride and boast ; to tell how, under the benign influence of literty and 
peace, there sprang up, in the course of a single century, a prosperity unpar- 
alleled in the annals of human affairs. 

"The pledge given by Mr. McMaster, that 'the history of the people shall be the 
chief theme,' is punctiliously and satisfactorily fulfilled. He carries out his promise in 
a complete, vivid, and delightful way. We should add that the literary execution of 
the work is worthy of the indefatigable industry and unceasing vigilance with which 
the stores of historical material have been accumulated, weighed, and sifted. The 
cardinal qualities of style, lucidity, animation, and energy, are everywhere present. 
Seldom indeed has a book in which matter of substantial value has been so happily 
united to attractiveness of form been offered b> an American author to his fellow- 
citizens." — New York Sun. 

"To recount the marvelous progress of the American people, to describe their life, 
their literature, their occupations, their amusemerts, is Mr. \LcMaster's object. His 
theme is an important one, and we congratulate him on his success. It has rarely been 
our province to notice a book with so many excellences and so few defects." — New J ork 
Herald. 

" Mr. McMaster at once shows his grasp of the various themes and his special 
capacity as a histoiian of the people. His aim is high, but he hits the mark." — 
New York Journal of Commerce. 

"... The author's pages abound, too, with illustrations of the best kind of histori- 
cal work, that of unearthing hidden sources of information and employing them, not 
after the modern style of historical writing, in a mere report, but with the true artistic 
method, in a well-digested narrative. ... If Mr. McMaster finishes his work in the 
spirit and with the thoroughness and skill with which it has begun, it will take its place 
among the classics of American literature." — Christian Union. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3. & 5 Bond Street. 



Established by Edward L. Youmans. 

The Popular Science 
Monthly, 

Edited "by "WrLLI-AJyE J^Y YOUMANS, 

Is well known as a trustworthy medium for the spread of scientific truth 
in popular form, and is filled with articles of interest to everybody, by 
the ablest writers of the time. Its range of topics, which is widening 
with the advance of science, includes — 

Prevention of Disease and Improvement of the Hace. 

Agricultural and Food Products. 

Social and Domestic Economy. 

Political Science, or the Conduct of Government. 

Scientific Ethics ; Mental Science and Education. 

Man's Origin and Development. 

Relations of Science and Religion. 

The Industrial Arts. 

Natural History ; Discovery ; Exploration, Etc. 

With other illustrations, each number contains a finely engraved 
Portrait of some eminent scientist, with a Biographical Sketch. 
Among its recent contributors arc : 



WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D., 

HERBERT SPENCER, 

DAVID A. WELLS, 

T. H. HUXLEY, 

Sie JOHN LUBBOCK, 

EDWARD ATKINSON, 

T. D. CROTHERS, M. D., 

W. K. BROOKS, 

E. D. COPE, 

DAVID STARR JORDAN, 

T. MITCHELL PRUDDEN, M. D., 

JOSEPH LE CONTE, 

APPLETON MORGAN, 

FELIX L. OSWALD, 

J. 8. BILLINGS, M.D., 



BENJ. WARD RICHARDSON, M.D., 

ANDREW D. WHITE, 

F. W. CLARKE, 

HORATIO HALE, 

EDWARD S. MORSE, 

J. S. NEWBERRY, 

WALTER B. PLATT. M.D., 

EUGENE L. RICHARDS, 

THOMAS HILL, 

N. S, SHALER, 

D. G. THOMPSON, 

AMBROSE L. RANNEY, M. D„, 

GRANT ALLEN, 

Sie WILLIAM DAWSON, 

J. HUGHLINGS JACKSON, M.D. 



Subscription price, $5.00 per Annum. 



New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



